


What Goes Around

by Nightwind69



Series: Restoration [1]
Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), Transformers Generation One
Genre: AU/Reimagination, Aftermath of Torture, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Caste-Based Societies, Don't Piss Off Swoop, Dubious Consent, Eusociality, F/M, Feral Behavior, First Time, He thinks they sound curse-ier, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jazz tends to agree, Loss of Virginity, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Gooshy Romance, OK those make it sound dark but it's really not, Psychosis, Ratchet Is a Good Dad, Rough Sex, Skywarp prefers human expletives, Starscream Causes Mayhem, Starscream's Immortal Spark, Suicidal Thoughts, Thundercracker is Awesome, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, don't, no really, snarky medics, world-building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 91,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24675892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightwind69/pseuds/Nightwind69
Summary: Everything changes when Swoop grows up.Everything.Meanwhile, for Starscream, no good deed goes unpunished. And he loses his mind. But he gets better!(This is a story set in a universe that's less of an AU and more of a complete reimagination of most everything about Transformers -- Except that they're still transforming robots -- so it's hard to summarize it. Reading the info-dump prologue of this is pretty much mandatory or else nothing is going to make any sense whatsoever.)
Relationships: Starscream/Swoop
Series: Restoration [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1784119
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the really long note, but I think it's necessary, for anyone who hasn't read this thing before.
> 
> This story was sparked by a few things:  
> 1) A reimagining of Cybertronian history and sociobiology that thunked me in the head and wouldn't go away. It continues the grand sci-fi tradition of making aliens a lot like bugs. Plus, the concept of eusociality in general is fascinating to me, and I think it applies well to our favorite robots. So combine all that and we have...this.  
> 2) It's sort of a HAH! to all the fics out there that feminize Starscream and/or turn him into a domestic abuse victim. Not that those are necessarily bad things because I _totally_ did the latter, in spades. But for this? I turn Starscream into an Alpha Male. He has to jump through a lot of hoops to get there, though, and he doesn't get there in this story. It just sets him on the path.  
> 3) Its cracky pairing had been plaguing me since about 1985 (Seriously!), and this _finally_ gave me a justification to write it and make it a bit less cracky. And no, this being marked as F/M is NOT a mistake.
> 
> This was originally conceived as a "28 Meme," just disjointed stories featuring Ye Olde Crack Pair. (Which is why this is heavy on the two leads and sparse on everyone and everything else, which is something I do plan to rectify in future stories.) Then the reimagination hit me in the head and the damned thing grew both a plot and an epic continuity. Of course, since this is a reimagination, it does not conform to any version of the canon in _any_ way, though it does draw stuff from select bits of the original cartoon while at the same time completely ignoring a lot of it. (Female Autobots? What female Autobots? Vector Sigma? What's that? *shifty eyes*) Overall, it's weird, but it does all make sense if you can buy into the general premise. 
> 
> The story is set in 2008, which is when I started to write it. So, the Dinobots are 24 years old, on the cusp of "adulthood," and they talk like normal people. Because I ~~hate writing bad Dinobot grammar/syntax~~ say so. It does draw in/mention some elements of my Dinobot stories -- Swoop-as-medic, Sludge-as-artist, etc. -- but this isn't meant to take place in the same continuity at all.
> 
> I originally wrote and posted this to FF.net over the course of a couple years, 2009-2011. It was one of the last TF fics I wrote because shortly after I finished it Stuff Happened and I stopped writing fanfic altogether. I'm kinda feeling the urge to write this stuff again, though, to finish unfinished fics and whatnot, and just recently, I found the notes and outlines and even a few fragments and complete fics that I wrote for this continuity. It's what sparked my little nostalgia kick here, so I'm thinking perhaps I will continue this tale. It's fun for me (though perhaps not for anyone else!) because I get to world-build. I need something fun in my life right now.
> 
> For this posting to AO3, I've rewritten some bits of the story here and there (and simultaneously did quite a bit of editing that it _sorely needed_ ) because I've refined some ideas vis-à-vis the reimagining. None of it affects the overall plot of this story at all, just the "backstory," but if I'm going to continue writing this continuity this lead-off story needed some fixes here and there to reflect that refining. Mostly, this affects this prologue, which is pretty much an info-dump to outline the points of the reimagination that pertain to this specific story. It's a bad case of telling rather than showing, but it is what it is.
> 
> This thing is a novel, about 75,000 words in 22 chapters, so I'm not going to be posting it here all in one go. I'll probably put up a couple chapters at a time. 
> 
> And one final note: When I go AU, I use a compressed timeline. Everything in Transformers seems to be measured in millions of years, but I comprehend big numbers, and I just can't wrap my mind around individuals that live for millions of years, not even robots. I prefer thousands, which is still alien-ly big but not mind-bogglingly big. So, for instance, in this universe the Ark crashed on Earth 4 thousand years ago -- within human recorded history -- not 4 million years ago.
> 
> OK, on to the story now...

Excerpted from a brief written by Autobot Skids, part of an informational packet presented to the members of the U.S. Diplomatic Corps in 1985, in the interest of fostering further interspecies understanding:

_...Human society is, to us, chaotic and disturbingly unstructured, but this is perhaps because human biology, when compared to ours, is enviably simple. For humans, two individuals couple, some genetic material is exchanged, and in due time new members of the species are born. Those new individuals then proceed through successive larval stages until they are deemed mature, at which point they repeat the cycle. For us, the issue is far more complex. Each of us is essentially a merger between a consciousness -- what we call a spark -- and a mechanical body that is largely maintained by nanotechnology. For the vast majority of us, our bodies are simply built, and we have the ability to move to different ones, although that generally happens only if the one we have is catastrophically damaged. Our sparks, however, are a very different story, and their origin and propagation is rooted in our sociobiology._

_Our life scientists have had numerous dialogs with human life scientists, and together they have realized that Cybertronian society has much in common with some non-human societies that exist here on Earth. Humans call them eusocial insects, like some species of ants and bees. Like those societies, ours is rigidly structured with highly specialized groups of individuals that are meant to perform specific functions for the collective benefit of our society, functions that only members of those specific groups of individuals can perform. Within those general groups, there exist hierarchies as well as some individuals who are further specialized to carry out very specific functions, such that only that individual can perform that particular function. This hyper-specialization makes our society far more eusocial than any species on Earth. And, in many ways, it makes us far more fragile, as well._

_Like some insect species on Earth, there is only one individual in our society who is able to produce new sparks. For lack of a more accurately-translated term and because it is the term that humans use when referring to the eusocial societies with which they are familiar, I will refer to her as a queen. She differs from all of us in that her spark has the inborn capability, given proper energy input from a male at specific cyclical times, to create new sparks without damage to her own. The process is regulated by a complex electrochemical drive initiated in both participants, the timing and frequency of which is dictated by many factors. Each of the new sparks the queen produces has its own unique traits unrelated to her own and, once merged with a body, the new individual will have their own unique base personality that will grow and develop over time. The new sparks – usually about a dozen are produced per cycle – are harvested from the queen once they are developed and are then stored in stasis for future merging. They are our future generations in waiting._

_That said, it should come as no surprise that our societal organization is not built around gender. The vast majority of our population has neither gender nor the ability to contribute to reproduction. Nor is it built around any sort of familial structure as, aside from the queen and her siblings and offspring, none of us has a family as humans think of them. We are raised communally, in cohorts, much like the young of eusocial species on Earth. And like those societies, ours too is built around a caste structure. One's caste membership is our most basic identifier, as gender is for humans. There are three castes, each of which performs functions that the others cannot, and when our society is functioning properly, all members of all three castes cooperatively and altruistically contribute to the maintenance, continuance, and ongoing betterment of our society on a communal rather than an individual level._

_The smallest caste by far is the royal caste, to which only queens, her living relatives, and any offspring whom she has produced belong. The offspring that the queen produces, unlike the unmerged sparks she creates, are all born as a "complete" individual, a body with an already-integrated and inseparable spark. They are not unlike human infants though they are not born underdeveloped and helpless as are human infants. The queen's offspring are also, without exception, gendered, and she will usually produce many more females than males. Royal males mature much more quickly than royal females do and without exception serve on our ruling council, but the females serve no function until they are mature. When the current queen reaches the end of her life, one of her mature female relatives -- usually a daughter, if any exist -- will undergo a demanding transformational process that is both physical and psychological in nature in order to awaken as the new queen. Those who are not so 'chosen' can either live out their lives on Cybertron serving whatever function they wish, or it is possible for them to leave, along with at least two males, to establish a new society on another world. The latter, for various reasons, has not happened within living memory, however._

_It should be noted that the queen's function in our society is biological, not political. Officially, she has no political power whatsoever, her only job being to breed, both unmerged sparks as well as offspring in order to ensure succession. Rather, a ruling council consisting of individuals from all three castes is our society's legislative body. That being said, the queen is an extremely powerful central figure in our cultural subconscious, and that sometimes tended to override petty politics. This meant that sometimes the queen had far more political influence than she ought to have had, and this was particularly true of our last queen._

_Unfortunately for us, our queen, almost all of the members of her family, and most of the ruling council were deposed and killed by Megatron and a small group of other warriors, after which Megatron imposed planet-wide martial law under his sole authority. This was the incident which ultimately, though not immediately, precipitated the Great War that has been waged for thousands of years on Cybertron and that has now spread to Earth. Megatron and his group systematically hunted down and destroyed in particular the female royals in order to ensure his supremacy in the new societal order that he created, to make certain that no new queen would awaken to challenge the authority that he gave himself. To most of us, this was nothing less than genocidal insanity, given that its results doomed our society -- and therefore, so far as we know -- our entire species to extinction because the royal caste is now functionally extinct. Only two royals survived the Uprising. Both still survive, but both are male._

_The Uprising was precipitated by the fact that the queen had acquired far too much political influence, something that slowly accumulated over numerous generations. It was something that ought to have been checked, but that, unfortunately for us, was not; the analogy of a frog placed into a pot of water that is slowly raised to the boiling point is apt. Ultimately, the royal caste's slow corruption upset the delicate role-balance that is required for the proper functioning of our society. Our last queen had distinct imperialistic tendencies and tended to see the warriors -- the next-largest caste in our society -- as mere cannon fodder to be disposed of as she saw fit, to further her own aims and ambitions and, sometimes, simply for entertainment. The warriors grew deeply resentful of this, and rightfully so. This resentment was the ultimate cause of the Uprising, which indeed served to check the royal caste's growing corruption, but the side-effect of that checking was catastrophic._

_On the surface, the Uprising was shocking because it required those who participated in it to completely change their mindset, which for us ought to be impossible to do. Those who managed to do so were on the whole small in number, but that small number consisted of some extremely powerful individuals in our societal hierarchy, the most powerful of whom was Megatron. He was and remains War Leader, the apex of the entire warrior-caste hierarchy, including all of its highly-specialized subgroups. On a deeper level, however, the Uprising was understandable because the one thing that binds together all warriors is that they have strong, inborn tendencies toward both reverence for the royal caste and protectiveness. These drives are normally channeled for the purpose of the protection of members of the royal caste, as well as protection of the crèches where our young are reared, and indeed protection of our society and home planet in general. Those who participated in the Uprising simply channeled that protective drive into protecting_ themselves _against the predilections and outright depredations exhibited by our last queen, which ultimately resulted in tragedy and the destruction of our society._

_Some of the warriors were not able to change their mindset and did not participate in the Uprising at all, while some of them did participate but ultimately chose not to support Megatron in the long term. Some of the latter group also chose not to actively oppose him, however, perhaps fatalistically reasoning that without a royal line to protect and without a queen to produce new sparks, their services were no longer required in any capacity, given that the caste's secondary responsibility is reproduction, as warriors are without exception male, and aside from a scant few others, they are the only individuals who can provide the queen with the kind of energy that she requires in order to create new sparks. That being said, most of the warriors who still exist eventually allied themselves with their War Leader whether or not they participated in the Uprising and so now identify as Decepticons._

_A very small number of warriors, however, eventually chose to support the Autobot cause, once it was eventually consolidated under Optimus Prime. In doing so, they chose to fight against, in some cases, their friends and in all cases their castemates, a thing that is unnatural and therefore very difficult for them to do. Their input and the training they have offered have obviously been invaluable to the Autobot cause, as most of us had no innate or even learned knowledge of combat and warfare because the vast majority of the Autobots are members of the civil caste._

_The civil caste is by far the largest. In fact, it still makes up the vast majority of our society, even though that society is now in ruins. Traditionally, the caste's responsibility is to provide everything that our society requires aside from reproduction and offense/defense. This is, of course, a huge responsibility that requires a huge number of individuals to fulfill, vastly outnumbering the royal and warrior castes combined. So it is perhaps not surprising that the civil caste is divided into a large number of sub-castes, which we call guilds. These include our scientists, our artists, our medics, our administrators and civil servants, our engineers, architects, and builders, our merchants, and hundreds of other distinct groups, down to simple manual laborers. Each guild has a specific function and, as with the warriors, there are also some further-specialized members of each guild, as well. Between those of us on Earth and those of us still on Cybertron, the Autobots count amongst our organization representatives from many of the civil guilds as well as a handful of warriors and one of the two surviving royals._

_However, the war has and continues to decimate not only our home planet but also our very social structure as specialized individuals are destroyed who, now, cannot be replaced. In addition, since we lack a queen, the war is decimating our population in general. Three of the four stasis vaults where unmerged sparks had been housed on Cybertron, each capable of indefinitely maintaining about ten thousand sparks, have been destroyed over the course of the war to date, the sparks that had been housed within them extinguished. The fourth vault is still functional but is heavily damaged. Tens of thousands of lives, enough to perpetuate our society for perhaps millions of years, were lost before they had a chance to live. Now, they cannot be replaced, and the war continues._

_When we Autobots left Cybertron, the remaining stasis vault had housed only 179 viable sparks. At the time, we knew that it was possible that we would never be able to return to or have future contact with our home planet, so we took forty of those sparks with us when we left, all that our ship could safely support long-term in stasis. In the event that we ended up settling on another world, it was thought that this might give those few sparks, at least, a chance to survive and live their lives. It is for this reason that our ship, which has now become our headquarters, has come to be known as the Ark, so named by human associates of ours. Having now read the source text to which the name refers, I agree that the reference is quite apt._

_Thirty-two of the sparks we took with us survived the Ark's unexpected crash on Earth four thousand years ago as well as the subsequent period of hibernation, but none of them survived completely intact and undamaged. Still, our chief engineer and our chief medic were recently able to utilize five of those damaged sparks in order to create the newest members of our species: The Dinobots. We have hope that the procedures used to bring them to life can be revised and improved so that the other twenty-seven damaged sparks currently remaining in protective stasis can be salvaged as well._

_As it is, in the wake of the ruin of our society and given our lack of a queen with no possibility of replacing her, most of us are simply inclined to accept that we are doomed, and this pervasive sense of fatalism is, perhaps, the very thing that perpetuates the war..._


	2. Imperative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have noted this in my main note, but since it is a noticeable thing in this particular chapter...
> 
> In my head, the Dinobots aren't all huge. Rather, they were built to scale, according to the relative sizes of the dinosaur/pterosaur species they represent. Thus, Sludge is the biggest of them by far and Swoop is the smallest, since _Pteranodon_ s, like modern birds, had small bodies relative to their wingspans. For reference, in my head, Swoop is about 3/4 the size of Starscream and much lighter than him.

Swoop was precariously perched on the lip of a mist-shrouded gorge that was a thousand meters deep, carved over eons by the wide river that snaked its way through the bottom of it. He… _She_ was staring single-mindedly into the gorge's depths. She had her knees drawn into her chest, her hands clasped tightly over her shins, fingers determinedly interlaced, as if she was struggling to keep herself from flying apart. Despite the sweltering equatorial heat and the dripping humidity, she was shivering, violent tremors wracking her small body in waves. Occasionally, sounds emerged from her, little whimpers and hitches in her breath that had whiffs of carefully-suppressed pain and deep distress about them.

Starscream expected her to fly off at his approach, like a panicked bird flushed from its roost. He was prepared to fly after her, to pursue her until they both had not enough energy to fly and so would have no fight left in them. That might have made things easier, even. But Swoop didn't move. Her senses on overly defensive alert, she stilled and lifted her head the moment that she detected Starscream's approach, her posture instantly stiff and wary, but other than involuntary tremors and twitches, that was the only move that she made. When Starscream was a mere five meters from her, she turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were wide and feral, glowing an unnaturally bright yellow-green against the gathering purples of encroaching twilight. The glowing intensity of her eyes, coupled with the watchful and vaguely threatening expression on her face, gave Starscream pause, and he took a small step backward, all unconsciously.

He'd had some idea of what he'd be facing with Swoop -- He'd seen it before -- but even under normal circumstances she was potentially lethal and always unpredictable. Now, she was giving him a wild-eyed look that clearly conveyed an intention to eat him alive. She was also panting, her body fighting to cool itself. The combination was enough to make something within Starscream lurch as he stared at her, compelling him to move toward her, but he checked himself, held his ground, deciding that he needed to be in some semblance of control for as long as he could be in control. He watched Swoop warily, willing himself not to move, not even to twitch, waiting for her to make the next move. But she didn't move, either. Instead, she spoke, which surprised Starscream. He hadn't expected much in the way of conversation.

"If you know what's good for you, Starscream, you'll turn around and leave," Swoop snarled after a long moment spent staring heatedly at him. Her voice was low and growling, her gaze burning wherever it touched him. "Before I'm forced to do something we'll both regret," she added.

She was far gone. Starscream could tell by the look on her face and the sound of her low, guttural voice. The latter was changing just as much as practically everything else about her was changing, at least internally. She was undergoing a transformation the likes of which Starscream didn't want to imagine. On the other hand, it occurred to Starscream that if she still felt a need to warn him, then she was not quite so far gone that she was beyond trying, with the stubborn tenacity that all of the Dinobots had in overabundance, to fight what was happening to her, to fight what she was becoming, even though she had to know that it was a fight that she could only lose. Nor was she beyond fighting the fact that it would, inevitably, be Starscream. But ultimately, she had no choice. Neither did Starscream.

Not for the first time, Starscream marveled at the fact that the Autobots had managed to create her in the first place, without resources from Cybertron. Now he was forced to marvel as well that somehow, in a way that was beyond his ability to comprehend, she was a queen. It made no sense. Queens came from queens, and the queen had been dead for thousands of years. He'd watched her die. Swoop had been created a mere twenty-four years ago, long after the queen's death. The entire situation was puzzling. A Primus-wrought miracle, perhaps.

For a warrior, Starscream was of a scientific bent. He didn't believe in deities, his own or anyone else's, so he didn't believe in divinely-wrought miracles, either. Yet, he couldn't deny Swoop's status. He felt the pull toward her, strong and threatening now, with close proximity, toward overwhelming. He had known, from thousands of kilometers away, exactly where she was even before he had left Decepticon Headquarters. He knew, deep down on an instinctive level, that she was exactly what the Autobots had claimed that she was. And he knew that, very soon now, they would be…

Best not to think on that, at the moment, Starscream decided.

The Decepticons had been "lucky" enough to have captured Swoop, making her their guest for ten days or so. During that time, Starscream had assigned himself the task of analyzing, determining the weaknesses of, and if at all possible reverse-engineering and replicating the extremely light but astonishingly strong armor that Wheeljack had created specifically for Swoop. It granted her the ability to hover and to glide for extended periods of time, greatly reducing her energy consumption, all without sacrificing structural integrity or defensive capability. Starscream had been planning to figure out how Wheeljack had managed this feat even if he had to rip off every last bit of Swoop's armor and melt it down in order to analyze its constituent elements because being able to replicate it would be a boon. The project had kept him in very close proximity to Swoop for the better part of a week, and unbeknownst to anyone, including Swoop herself, she had begun the final stage of the royal transformation even before she had been captured, and during the time that she had spent alone with Starscream, in physical contact with him, she had imprinted on him.

But then the Decepticons had exchanged Swoop for Soundwave, whom the Autobots had captured during the course of the same conflict during which Starscream had managed to bring down and disable Swoop, without her fearsome brothers being able to rescue her. Starscream had argued vociferously against the exchange, wanting, so he'd thought, to continue his work. Now he realized that his extreme unwillingness to let Swoop go had been fueled by something else entirely. Still, in the end, Swoop had gone back to the Autobots with her armor more or less intact. Once returned to the Autobots, her "condition" had progressed quickly, and they had eventually figured out what was "wrong" with her.

Hence, Ratchet's call only the day before, informing Starscream that his services would be required. He had scathingly refused, insisting that the Autobot medic was lying for some reason. Ratchet, in response, had given him a pityingly amused look and had predicted that he'd be changing his tune in about ten hours. And Ratchet had almost been right. In the end, it was only a little less than seven hours before Starscream was climbing the walls, filled with desperate excess energy and barely refraining from howling to be let out of Decepticon Headquarters so that he could go find Swoop. And now he found himself somewhere in the wilds of a rain forest in Bolivia, the place that she had chosen for this rendezvous. The hot, dripping environment seemed appropriate for the occasion, and it was neutral ground, very remote, and completely unpopulated by anything sapient.

Starscream ended the uneasy stalemate that had developed between Swoop and himself by closing the distance between them and boldly sitting down next to her, his legs hanging over the rim of the gorge. He leaned far forward, contemplating the placid, green-brown stretch of river at the bottom while Swoop gave him a heated, askance look, even though he had been careful not to touch her. But he was close enough now to feel the unnatural heat that was radiating from her, and it made him shiver. The rate of her panting increased as she gazed at Starscream, somewhat more eye-to-eye now that he wasn't standing and therefore looming over her, and as their gazes met, it was suddenly all Starscream could do to refrain from pulling her to him. He tucked his hands firmly under his thighs to help stave off the impulse, even though he knew that it was only delaying the inevitable.

"That…" Swoop said haltingly, between pants, "was really...not good…for you."

"Fortunately for you, I'm not known for doing what's good for me," Starscream replied with a smirk and a cavalier shrug. Swoop scowled at Starscream for his flippancy, her gaze a mixture of scorching desire and deep revulsion, an odd but somehow enticing combination, and after a moment or two spent staring at each other, the nearness of her was overwhelming. As if in some mutual trance, Starscream leaned toward her at the very same time that she leaned toward him.

The first kiss between them was chaste, but it was electric. Starscream was a highly experienced individual, but he'd never been imprinted by an in-cycle queen, and the contact was like nothing that he had ever experienced. Energy and heightened sensation lanced like liquid fire through his entire body at breathtaking speed, starting at the very moment of contact. It was like a lightning-induced power surge, and it felt like it should be frying circuit pathways as it passed through him, but it wasn't doing any damage other than to his self control. Like a lightning bolt, however, the contact was very short-lived.

Something clicked in some part of Swoop's mind that was still managing to cling to control, realizing what was happening between them at about the same moment that she decided that she didn't like it at all, and she abruptly broke the kiss and jerked away from Starscream with a noise of disgust. She scuttled backward, crab style, ending up a dozen meters away from Starscream. He watched her retreat, reflecting that, on the plus side, she hadn't taken off and flown. Not that he couldn't catch her easily if she'd chosen to do that, but it would have wasted time and energy, as the outcome of a chase was foregone. The imprint was such that he'd be able to find her no matter where she ran. And eventually, neither of them would want to hide or run from the other at all.

The mere thought prompted a small and anticipatory shudder to work its way through Starscream's body, and suddenly Swoop wasn't the only one who was panting. The imperative had kicked in for him as well, fueled and jolted into high gear by the brief physical contact between himself and the Dinobot. Desire suffused him, thrusting aside little things like opposing factions and even mutual hatred. If anything, those fanned the flames higher and hotter. Starscream had gotten an all-too-brief taste of her, and he found that he wanted more, much more, and he wanted it now.

He twisted away from the edge of the gorge with a growl that he wouldn't have thought himself capable of and crawled on hands and knees toward Swoop. She held her position, having backed herself up against the thick, moss-covered trunk of an impressively tall tree. She was staring at the Seeker half in wariness and half in challenge as he moved inevitably closer, her chin raised at him. And then she was moving, too, shifting to her own hands and knees and crawling to meet Starscream. Her movements were uncertain, but they had a predatory sleekness that Starscream found himself appreciating. Her expression was still that odd combination of desire, timidity, and hatefulness, but she was moving toward him. Willingly.

He reached out to her once she was within arm's reach again, slid his hand around to firmly cup the back of her neck, and then insistently drew her toward him for another kiss. This one was as stimulating as the first one had been, and it lasted a lot longer. It wasn't long before Starscream felt as if parts of his insides were melting, and a moment or two after that, he felt Swoop relax under his hand as well, the tension that had held her entire body stiff suddenly draining from her…until he began to encourage her to open her mouth, tracing along her lips with his tongue. She abruptly broke the kiss then, tension slamming back into her as she jerked away from Starscream, but this time she held her ground. It was an improvement, he decided. She opened her mouth to say something, but Starscream wasn't in the mood for conversation.

"Just let it happen," he hissed at her impatiently, heading off whatever she had been about to say. "It'll be much easier for both of us that way." And then he leaned into her again.

Swoop met him enthusiastically this time, which Starscream hadn't expected at all. He'd thought that a lot more coaxing and perhaps even some force would be in order, but it seemed that the last remaining sliver of rational Swoop had decided to take a nice little vacation. And this time she didn't hesitate to open her mouth under Starscream's when he asked for entrance. He slammed his tongue boldly into the virgin territory of Swoop's mouth, and this, like a key unlocking a door, seemed to ignite something within her. She growled and pressed aggressively into the kiss, moaning softly and sweetly into the devouring fire of it. She shifted into him, wrapping her arms possessively around him and molding her body as closely as possible to his. They fit surprisingly well together, and Starscream faintly noted that the heat that she was radiating was delicious against him, even though their surroundings were already sweltering.

Taking all of her actions as something of a hint, Starscream bit lightly and experimentally down on Swoop's tongue, just to see how she would react to the gesture. In response, she dug her fingers into his back with enough strength to dent and then slide underneath armor. When Starscream groaned in response to her attentions, she stopped what she was doing, pulling her hands away from him as if they'd been burned, but Starscream was having none of that. Reaching behind himself, he grabbed her hovering and suddenly uncertain hands, slamming them back down where they had been. At the same time, he broke the kiss between them with a growl, connected his gaze with her suddenly confused one, and heatedly snarled, "Don't you _dare_ stop!"

For a moment, Swoop stared at him, wide-eyed and startled, before she blinked slowly once, twice, and a wicked little smile of growing comprehension spread over her face. Warm little fingers started roughly exploring him, outwards from where they'd originally landed. One hand went down, the other sliding around to his flank, learning his angles and contours, probing with increasing aggression as she cataloged his reactions to what she was doing. She was a delightfully quick study, bless her little royal spark.

"Mmmmm," he murmured appreciatively under her assault, his head drifting forward and down until his forehead rested heavily on the top of her shoulder. He greedily drank in the sensations that she was wrenching from his body, biting down hard on his own lip to stop himself from shrieking when she unwittingly happened upon that one exquisitely sensitive little armor seam in his left flank. Her attentions to it alone soon had him shuddering in her arms, and this she exploited mercilessly, continuing to claw at him. "Atta girl," Starscream encouraged her quietly, then turned his head to nuzzle and then nip experimentally at the side of her neck.

In response, Swoop's eyes flew suddenly wide, and she growled a throaty, alien-animal growl that took another bite out of Starscream's rapidly-dwindling self-control. He began to explore the side of her neck in aggressive earnest as her exploration of him simultaneously kicked up a few notches on the aggression scale and more armor began to give way. He hissed at the pain-pleasure and reflexively sank his teeth into the juncture of her shoulder and her neck, hard enough to tear even her superior armor. It was a much deeper bite than he'd intended, but judging by the rapturous screech she emitted, it was obvious that Swoop appreciated rougher attentions. In that regard, they were very compatible. 

As Swoop lost control, she began to growl and snarl in an ever-more-animalistic way, sounds that Starscream decided were extremely erotic when they came from an intelligent and, so he was discovering, delightfully responsive being. They were wrapped around each other, and energy was slowly gathering in Starscream, coalescing into a tingling pressure within his spark just as it should, steadily building just as it needed to do for their official purpose here. They were both still on their knees, and Swoop was tearing at Starscream, making noises that were indicative of a need that he wasn't sure that she understood on anything more than a clinical level. But she would understand soon enough.

Starscream began to nudge at Swoop then, repeatedly leaning his much heavier weight into her until she glommed on to what he wanted. She shifted around so that she could lie back, and she pulled his unresisting body down with her as she went, grinning ferally at him. Once Swoop was down, Starscream had access to all of her, and he took full advantage, exploring parts of her body that he hadn't been able to reach while they'd been upright. Swoop squirmed and occasionally cried out in response to what he was doing to her, and with a building sense of urgency, he began to search for an interface port. She had several of them in various places on her body, used for many purposes other than the one that he intended, but none of them, for obvious reasons, were blatantly advertised.

Swoop, perhaps not quite as clueless about these things as he'd thought, grabbed one of his hands and guided it down so that it rested half way up the inside of her right thigh. She even helpfully ripped off the small, protective panel that covered the port while she was down there, snarling at the bit of pain she inflicted on herself. The port that she revealed was convenient to one of Starscream's own, situated on the outside of his left hip. It dawned on him that, as a medic, she had probably known that and had guided him accordingly.

Grinning wickedly, he kissed her quickly and then brightly said, "Thanks for the assist, ma'am."

"Anytime," she responded breathlessly, squirming impatiently.

And then she cried out as Starscream jacked into her and sent her a long and high-frequency energy pulse that left her writhing and whimpering in need when he eventually let it ebb. She went still for a moment after that, panting as she processed the sensations that were pulsing through her, and then, wild-eyed and moving quickly, leaving Starscream no chance to resist or even to react, she pulled him fully down on her, easily bearing his full weight, and moments later jacked into him with blind medical precision. She reciprocated the energy pulse, and then she clenched her jaw, mewling softly around it as she weathered the echoes of his pleasure, coming as it did so hard on the heels of her own.

For some time, they exchanged energy pulses. It was all new for Swoop, so Starscream slowed their pace, taking his time, allowing urgency to build slowly between them. It wasn't as if they had a deadline, and he was enjoying her responsiveness. He found, much to his surprise, that he wanted to prolong things between them as much as he could. Which unfortunately wasn't quite as long as he might have liked because, inevitably, the energy pulses they shared became more powerful and less controlled, reflecting the increasingly uncontrolled actions between them. Kisses were violent collisions. Fingers scored and dented armor, probing none-too-gently at what lay beneath it. Brutal bites unleashed small rivers of energon flowing freely from numerous wounds. Pain impulses morphed immediately into shared pleasure as they became completely lost in each other, drowning in mutual sensations amplified and transmitted between them by the interface connections.

Swoop was soon very close to overload, writhing and shuddering and crying out desperately under Starscream as energy pulsed into her and sensation cycled between them in an infinite feedback loop. She was keening and snarling, the vicious alien animal that dwelled at the core of her being all that was left of her now. She was wild, violent...and Starscream was delighting in it. The pleasure and the pain commingled nicely, and he did everything that he could to encourage her, whispering naughty things at her, concentrating focused attention on various areas of her body that he'd discovered were very sensitive, feeding her impulses and sensation. He kept her on a knife edge for a while, mindless with passion, but carefully avoiding pushing her over the edge.

Still, occasional coherent pleading did escape Swoop, begging Starscream for something that she didn't know quite how to ask for. Very soon, it was all too much for both of them. Swoop was balanced precariously on a tightrope, and all it would take to send her spiraling into a blinding overload – her very first one – was one judicious little push. Which Starscream was suddenly happy to provide. One precisely-controlled push of energy and sensation across the interface connection while he also bit down brutally into the front edge of her shoulder, tearing into it, and dug insistently into an extremely sensitive armor seam along her hip that he'd discovered, all of it guaranteed to shatter her mind.

And it did. Starscream could feel the shattering, the overwhelming pleasure that exploded within her small body as she struggled and thrashed powerfully beneath him, all of it translated, muted only slightly, across the interface connection between them. Swoop cried out, shuddering violently, energy arcing through her and off of her, scorching Starscream in tiny pinpricks wherever it touched him. She arched up helplessly against him, and her legs tightened spasmodically around his waist with crushing strength that would leave dents. She was small, but she was strong. Her mouth was frozen open in silent ecstasy for a fleeting moment, but then an animal, growling wail ripped itself out of her. The sound, the sheer amount of energy coursing through her, and the bright, powerful echoes of her ecstasy crashing across the interface connection dragged Starscream along with Swoop into a wash of white heat and light that obliterated all conscious thought and that very nearly knocked both of them offline.

Seconds or minutes or hours later, once his processors could function again, Starscream found that his forehead had come to rest against the front of Swoop's torn shoulder as aftershocks rolled lazily through both of them, making both twitch randomly. And there was a sound, at first unidentifiable, but then he realized that Swoop was cooing like a happy dove. He found the sound alone, alien as it was, very pleasing, not to mention the fact that the sonic vibrations transferred quite soothingly to him, as closely pressed against her as he was. His much-heavier weight was resting entirely on top of her, but she didn't seem to mind, and had they not had other pressing matters to attend to, Starscream was convinced that he could have easily allowed the soft, soothing sound that she was making to lull him into a happy sleep. 

But they did indeed have a pressing matter to attend to, and Starscream somehow managed to summon the strength required to lift his head. He gazed down at Swoop's face. She was smiling a deeply contented smile up at him, and she reached up one hand to tickle her fingers along the back of his head, the others stroking soothingly along the trailing edge of one of his scored and sensitized wings. It twitched and shuddered, of its own volition, under her ministrations.

"You're very good," Swoop murmured appreciatively as their gazes held, her voice low and trilling. She was sated for the moment, completely relaxed. Her right leg was still wrapped loosely around Starscream, a pleasing weight resting heavily on the small of his back.

"I know," Starscream murmured back, aiming an insufferable grin at her before inching slightly down her body, careful not to break the interface connections between them, kissing and nibbling his way soothingly around her chest.

"Very humble, too!" she asserted then, none-too-gently whacking one of his shoulder-mounted air intakes with one hand while incongruously encouraging his efforts with the other, fingers digging into the back of his head as he nibbled and licked at her.

Starscream tore his mouth away from Swoop's body and glanced in haughty amusement up at her face before returning his attention to her body.

"Humility is for lesser beings," he purred against her.

Swoop snorted at that, but she didn't have a chance to offer more of a rebuttal because Starscream had again zeroed in on that one certain spot on her side that he'd discovered. It seemed to freeze her processors completely in their tracks when he manipulated it…just…so…

Long moments later, when he'd let up on his assault, slowly moving on to other targets that he'd discovered and cataloged, Swoop breathlessly announced, "You're right. You have no need of humility. Ohhhhhhh…Don't stop. Please, please, please don't stop…"

And then her voice devolved into moaning, gasping, and soft animal keening punctuated here and there with occasional needful whimpers as Starscream worked at her, grinning wickedly against her. This was nice, he decided. Delightful, even. A begging Autobot – a begging _queen_ , no less – was shuddering and squirming and whimpering beneath him. The interface connections between them were transmitting strong echoes of all the sensations that she was experiencing to him, and energy was building up in him, nice and steady.

Swoop wasn't passive, though. Her mouth was busy on the tip of a conveniently-close shoulder vent of Starscream's. She nibbled and licked and nuzzled away at it, biting down hard on occasion in response to the things that Starscream did to her as he worked his way ever so slowly around her body. Her bites shot pain impulses through him, encouraging his efforts. Meanwhile, her talented, medically-trained fingers were scrabbling and scratching along each of Starscream's wings, stroking what she could reach of the flats of them, teasing and tweaking roughly along their edges, and digging mercilessly into particularly sensitive spots when the mood struck her. In very short order, she wasn't the only one who was emitting uncontrolled hisses and cries of pleasure.

Pressure was building in Starscream's spark again. Overload had temporarily eased it, but now it was back with a vengeance, much stronger than it had been before, demanding release in a way that, this time, would not be denied or even delayed for very much longer. He slowly inched himself back up Swoop's body so that he could kiss her mouth, a kiss that she returned with manic fervor, clinging to him, managing to wrap all four limbs around him. But then she abruptly broke away.

"Starscream," she ground out around desperate, cooling gasps for air, "I want…You need…Need you to…I need…Ah!"

"Shhh," he shushed her, since it seemed that she wasn't quite coherent at the moment. "I know, Swoop. So do I," he soothingly assured her.

And it was the truth. It was time.

While nibbling and licking his way along Swoop's jaw and then down her neck, Starscream fumbled with one hand around and along the sides of the stylized _Pteranodon_ head that was cradled along the centerline of her torso, blindly searching for a catch of some sort, certain that her spark had to be under there somewhere. Eventually, impatiently, Swoop batted his hand away and unlatched it herself, then made a few further adjustments after that that he didn't see, as busy as he was. Once her movements had stilled, Starscream tore himself away from biting at the base of her throat and stared down at what she'd revealed to him.

Her spark was radiating a feverishly over-bright golden glow, pulsing fast enough that it almost seemed as if it wasn't pulsing at all, humming at a constant fever pitch that was almost a whine, needy and desperate. This, more than anything else, made real and immediate for Starscream exactly what was happening. Mature royal sparks were golden. No one could deny what Swoop was, now, as harsh golden light seeped from between the arms of the protective casing that embraced her spark, bright enough to illuminate their surroundings. The enormity of what Starscream was about to do – creating new lives with her – suddenly weighed heavily on him. Tearing his gaze away from her spark, Starscream looked back up at Swoop's face. She was smiling at him patiently, her eyes bright and knowing, muted to gold now, and she raised a hand to cup his face almost gently, her thumb sweeping over his cheek. She surmised the thoughts fueling his sudden apprehension, and she whispered softly, reassuringly, "It's all right, Starscream."

Then, still smiling and her gaze burning into his, her hand moved away from Starscream's face, her fingers trailing lightly down his throat, and then slowly, teasingly skipping down along his canopy. She expertly found the catch there, popped it open, and then, digging around a bit, she slid aside a few thick, protective internal armor plates, all with infinite gentleness and confident ease – She was a medic, after all – until his own spark was revealed. His glowed a brighter-than-usual and fast-pulsing crimson, counterpointing the golden pulsations of Swoop's at first but then detecting her rhythm and matching it exactly, pulse for heady pulse. Tracing around the protective casing – again blindly because by that point she'd levered herself up so that she could kiss him again – Swoop found the connector that would physically link his spark chamber to hers. She yanked on it gently, and then carefully uncoiled the thick but short cable that was attached to the connector as she pulled back slightly from the kiss.

"Just let it happen," she murmured playfully against Starscream's lips, echoing his own impatient words to her that he'd spoken what seemed like forever ago. He could feel her smiling, amused at his expense. "It'll be much easier for both of us that way."

"Smart-ass," Starscream muttered approvingly. He took possession of the cable she'd unwound and pushed her roughly down to the ground again, pinning her there by one wing even though she was offering no resistance whatsoever. His other hand traveled down to her exposed spark casing and busied itself with tracing around it for a moment or two. In response, Swoop emitted a rather cute little squeak, and her spark flared even brighter, which he wouldn't have thought possible. She shifted restlessly under him, making increasingly urgent and impatient noises.

After inching slightly down her body so that he could see what he was doing and then squinting into the harsh glare of the light spilling from her spark, Starscream located the small port on the casing, made the connection, and then inched back up her body, careful not to break the connections between them. Since he no longer had much in the way of wiggle room, he laid himself alongside but still partially on top of her.

"I'm sorry," he murmured sincerely against her audio once he'd settled himself. "This is going to hurt," he warned her, just in case she wasn't aware.

"I know," Swoop replied stoically. And then she reached down and nonchalantly disconnected the interface connections between them. As she did so she said almost regretfully, "We've established that we both like a bit of pain, but I don't particularly want this cycling between us." 

And then, half a second later, she gasped deeply as the pent-up energy from Starscream's spark rushed to infuse hers in a cascade of frightening power, white-hot sparks leaping between them. It was all Starscream could do not to reflexively jerk away from her. The in-drawn gasp that Swoop had taken rushed out of her then, in a long, wailing scream of blinding, spark-rending pain. She writhed as her spark absorbed an enormous amount of energy from Starscream's, all of the extra energy, and then some, that had been building up in him since she'd imprinted on him and that had increased exponentially once they were intimately together. The infusion would induce her spark to create entirely new lives. This was what her spark, and hers alone, was specialized to do, but that didn't mean that it was pleasant for her.

Starscream found that it was disconcerting to watch Swoop struggle with excruciating pain for what seemed like hours, although he knew it was only a minute or so. As she writhed and thrashed and cried out to the heavens, fingers scrabbling at and digging into the dirt and leaf litter underneath her, her body arching helplessly off the ground, he reflected that the line between agony and ecstasy was a very thin one, the physical reactions to both very similar. And he resolved that, when the pain was over, when they had fulfilled their duty, he was going to do his damnedest to make Swoop forget the agony by giving her an overbalancing amount of ecstasy.

It was almost tenderness toward her, and it was unaccustomed, greatly disquieting, and entirely the effect of the imprint. But at the moment, he didn't care. By the time that the energy transfer was complete, Swoop was reduced to whimpering helplessly in aftershocks of pain, completely vulnerable. Her entire body was shuddering violently, near to convulsing, and excess energy was fitfully arcing off of her. Her face was scrunched up in agony, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her breath gasping and labored. Her spark flared a deep, fiery orange as it absorbed the last bit of energy from Starscream before slowly returning to placid soft gold, pulsing more slowly and regularly now. The light that seeped from around its casing muted almost instantly from harsh, feverish brilliance to mellow glow, sublimely beautiful to behold as it transmuted their surroundings to liquid gold.

Starscream stared at the essence of her for a long while as Swoop recovered, wondering at it and at what they had just done. Then he terminated the connection between them, leaned down to lay a whimsical kiss on her spark casing, gently slid thick, protective internal armor plates back into place, and then carefully restored the _Pteranodon_ head to its rightful place down the centerline of Swoop's torso. Then, pushing himself up to lean on one hip alongside her, propped up on one arm, he stroked his other hand soothingly up and down the length her body, murmuring mostly-wordless but comforting sounds at her. He kept doing that until the pained tension entirely left her, her breathing slowing and smoothing, no longer panting. It took a while, but eventually Swoop relaxed, opening her eyes and looking up at Starscream, her gaze searching his, her expression curious.

"I'm sorry," Starscream murmured to her again, still stroking her, before she could say anything to him.

Swoop gave him an odd look at that, squinting up at him as she tried to determine his intentions now, frowning deeply.

"There's no reason to be," she eventually replied, going for a level, disinterested tone, but her voice was still roughened with the pain that she'd just experienced. "It's just how it is. I knew that, going into this."

"That doesn't mean that I can't be sorry," Starscream answered her softly. "Or," he added pointedly, "that I can't make it up to you."

Leaning down then, not giving Swoop a chance to respond or protest, Starscream kissed her. She was surprised and disconcerted at first, having expected nothing of the sort from him. She had expected indifference at best as the imprint between them began to dissolve. She had expected him to leave without so much as a backward glance –or, worse, to try to kill her – as soon as they had accomplished their task, thus freeing him of his physical obligation to her. But he didn't do any of that.

Instead, he was kissing her with startling gentleness, and she found herself responding eagerly, reaching up to touch him hesitantly at first but with increasing confidence as the kiss progressed and then as he broke it to pepper smaller kisses along her jaw line. He paused to suckle a sensitive spot and the hinge of her jaw for a while, and she shuddered in response.

Surprising. So very surprising.

But the night had been full of surprises, for both of them, and once Starscream expertly re-established the mutual interface connections between them they did not hesitate to completely lose themselves in each other again. Swoop managed to reverse their positions this time, so that she was straddling him, giving her more access to his body than she'd had when she'd been pinned under his greater size and weight, and she made excellent use of that advantage. Starscream was soon gone, helplessly drowning in her surprising depths, not even entertaining the thought of rescue.


	3. Off-White Lies

The sun was chasing Starscream as he flew west toward Decepticon Headquarters, as if eternally prolonging the moment that he had found himself awakening to the sunrise and to the unfamiliar but pleasant sensation of Swoop paying some meticulous attention to his canopy. _I could get used to this_ , had been the first bleary and blasphemous thought that had sighed its way through Starscream's mind, but once more rational thought took over, he had simply been strangely happy that Swoop hadn't just chosen to leave without saying a proper good-bye. She'd obviously recovered from and awakened from the previous night's exertions before he had, after all. She had told him, with almost endearing shyness given the nature of those previous exertions, that she had fully intended to leave, but then she had decided that she wanted to thank him for what he had done for her.

And thank him, she did. Gloriously.

It had been quite the chore to drag himself away from her, especially knowing that the next time he saw her she'd be trying to kill him and he her. It had strangely been one of the hardest things he'd ever done when he had pulled Swoop to her feet before tossing himself off the edge of the cliff. He had allowed himself a bit of heady freefall before transforming and skimming along the surface of the river until it became too narrow to accommodate his wingspan, and he'd had to pull up in order to clear the jagged spine of the Andes, anyway.

The pull that Starscream still felt toward Swoop was disquieting. It had not waned in the slightest, though he had hoped that the lingering effect of the imprint would go away quickly. As in, "before he got back to Headquarters" quickly. Of course, he rarely got his way when it came to just about anything, so as he flew into the gaping maw of Headquarters's raised docking tower, he was still fighting a very strong impulse to bank right back around and fly out again.

To go back to her.

To find her wherever she was, even if she was smack in the middle of Autobot Headquarters by now.

To have her again and again and again.

It was very difficult to quell the urge to obey the impulse. Had Starscream not been almost completely drained of energy from the previous night's and the morning's activities, he might very well have lost the fight. As it was, he had barely enough energy left – maybe – to report in and then to go crash somewhere. If he was _very_ lucky, the crashing wouldn't end up happening in a public corridor.

Starscream transformed as the huge docking tower door wheezed unsteadily shut behind him. Someone needed to get in there and overhaul its control mechanisms. It probably hadn't been done in the twenty-four years that had passed since the door had been constructed. One of these days, the damned thing was going to refuse to function at all, probably at the most inopportune time. He made a mental note to have it seen to, realizing as he did so that thinking about such mundane things – _normal_ things – was almost soothing. It was a distraction that momentarily gave his mind something to think about other than what had happened during the last eighteen hours or so, but the effect was ultimately fleeting.

Glancing around himself, Starscream found that he was alone in the hangar bay as it retracted back into the depths of Headquarters. That meant that he had a few solitary minutes to collect himself, especially because he knew well the few spots in the hangar bay that were out of the view of the security cameras. He stepped wearily over to one of those places and slid unsteadily down against the bulkhead, ignoring the indignant screech of metal on metal, until he was sitting on the deck plates. He found that he was shaking, and he willed himself to stop. Eventually, grudgingly, his body obeyed. Taking a deep, calming breath, Starscream tried to shove all memories of the past night out of the forefront of his thoughts. It was very difficult to do so, but he knew that he needed to be calm and collected and, most importantly, attentive and wary when he reported to Megatron.

Megatron had ordered him to terminate Swoop, even though he wasn't particularly convinced that she was what the Autobots claimed she was. But, queen or not, one less Dinobot in the universe was always a good idea, in Megatron's mind. A week ago, Starscream would have wholeheartedly agreed with him, though if he had his druthers he'd take out the one with the damned flamethrowers before he took out the flier, even though he -- _she_ \-- had become annoyingly good at aerial combat over the brief years of her existence. But now, Starscream was intimately aware that Swoop was exactly what the Autobots claimed she was. 

Which meant that she was suddenly a clear and _very_ powerful threat...to Megatron.

Megatron's position had been more or less secure for a very long time, rebellious Autobots notwithstanding, but he knew that a significant number of those currently loyal to him would desert him, perhaps even turn on him, in favor of a new queen should one somehow awaken. This was particularly so now, now that many Decepticons – Starscream himself included, of course – were growing increasingly disgruntled with Megatron as the conflict with the Autobots dragged on with no end in sight, as the war thinned their entire population to ridiculously low levels, as Megatron's myriad promises made thousands of years ago never materialized...and as he rather ironically became more and more like the hated queen whom he had deposed. His position was more vulnerable now than it had ever been, and he wasn't stupid, so he was well aware of it. And the paranoia was growing day by day.

So now, Megatron wanted Swoop gone, and he wanted her gone yesterday, before it could become widely known what she was. He was aware that doing so might mean the end of their species, even though he'd insisted -- for thousands of years now, long before Swoop came into the picture -- that he had a plan for that. Maybe he really did. Starscream truly didn't know. It was one of those promises that, so far, had never been fulfilled. Either way, looking at things from Megatron's point of view, his orders made sense in a crazy-paranoid Megatron sort of way. 

But even before Starscream had left Headquarters, he had decided that Swoop wasn't going to die. It wasn't in his own interests to kill her, only in Megatron's. Of late, Starscream did what was in Megatron's interests only if doing so also directly benefited himself in some way as well, and he had quickly come to the conclusion that Swoop's continued survival was far more to his own advantage than was her death. If her destiny was to challenge and perhaps be the instrument of Megatron's downfall, then her destiny was in alignment with his own goals. If her destiny was to avenge her predecessor's assassination in some grand, karmic kind of way, then giving her a reason to refrain from destroying him when the time came was not a bad idea. And if all of that wasn't her destiny at all, there was no strong downside that Starscream could see to allowing her -- and, as a consequence, _their entire species_ \-- to continue to live. At the very least, when her status was undeniably revealed to everyone, it would cause even more unrest amongst the Decepticons, which would only be to his own advantage. Naturally, when Megatron inevitably found out that Swoop was still alive, there would be repercussions. Personal ones. Very unpleasant ones. But even those seemed to pale in comparison to the possible future benefits. 

But for now, Megatron had to suspect nothing. He had to believe that Starscream had carried out his assigned mission, exactly as ordered. Starscream knew that he would find out that Swoop was still alive eventually, but likely not any time within the coming weeks. Starscream suspected that the Autobots would keep Swoop on a very short leash until she could be delivered of the new sparks that were already beginning to develop within her. The Autobots might prattle on _ad nauseum_ about freedom, but he was certain that Swoop would have none for the foreseeable future. For Starscream, that was a very good thing. But after that, once the Autobots let Swoop out of her cage and once Megatron had definitive proof that she still lived, there would be very unpleasant repercussions for Starscream unless he could devise a way around them, which he was confident that he would do, given time. Until then, Starscream would simply evade and outright lie his tail rudders off.

As usual.

Starscream grinned to himself at the thought, slowly starting to feel more in control of his own mind, more like himself. Utter chaos still lurked just under the surface, but he'd managed to construct a veneer of calm control over it. Which was a good thing because, a moment after that, a bump that was rougher than it ought to have been -- more maintenance needed, it seemed -- indicated that the docking tower had completed its descent. It was time to face Megatron.

Walking through the corridors of Decepticon Headquarters on his way to the bridge, Starscream garnered more than a few surreptitious but curious glances and double-takes. He glared at those who were less than surreptitious about their quizzical inspection of him, and they subsided, averting their curious gazes with alacrity. But Starscream knew that the looks were understandable. He was covered in dirt, riddled with dents of various sizes, scored with deep scratches, and there were a distressing number of armor-penetrating bite wounds all over his body, some of them quite large, and although his self-repair nanites wouldn't take long to fix the damage, a few of the wounds were still dripping energon and sparking fitfully. Starscream was, under normal circumstances, fastidious about his appearance and wouldn't be caught dead parading through the corridors looking as he did at the moment. But this time, he was wearing his dirt and damage with aplomb. With pride, even. This was not at all what his comrades expected to see, so they stared. Or at least they glanced, if they weren't bold enough to stare. Inwardly, all of it amused him.

When he arrived at the bridge, Starscream squared his shoulders in the second before the doors slid apart in front of him. Having no desire to answer a lot of questions about the previous night's events, he had every intention of making the necessary encounter as brief as possible. But for the time that he was there, he knew that he had to appear and behave as normally as possible, to avoid raising undue suspicion that he might be up to something, as, indeed, he was. As the doors opened, Starscream strode through them confidently, posture straight, shoulders square, expression as haughty as he could make it.

Megatron turned away from the viewscreen as he heard the doors slide open…and then he froze and stared at Starscream for a long moment as the Seeker approached him. A bewildered expression soon settled over his face, and his head slowly tilted to one side, as if he thought he could make better sense of Starscream's disheveled appearance from a more diagonal perspective. Starscream held his gaze levelly, chin raised challengingly. He was waiting for the inevitable withering comment and was already formulating an appropriate possible response, but then, off to the side, he heard Skywarp attempt but utterly fail to suppress a snicker at his expense, ruining the moment. Starscream glared at him. So did Megatron before he turned back to Starscream.

"Welcome back, Starscream," he rumbled snidely.

Starscream adopted an insolent air and folded his arms across his chest, staring levelly back at the War Leader.

"Thank you," Starscream answered with a judicious touch of airy impudence, but that was all that he said. Megatron hadn't demanded that he say anything else, and Starscream had decided not to offer up any information that he wasn't directly asked to provide.

Megatron continued to stare at Starscream, apparently waiting for him to say something else. When the Seeker offered nothing, he emitted an irritated little sigh that greatly amused Starscream.

"Well?" Megatron finally, exasperatedly demanded.

"Mission accomplished," Starscream reported brightly, with a crisp, but still somehow mocking salute; it was the little things like that that tended to wedge more easily under Megatron's armor and that therefore amused Starscream the most. And what Starscream had told him wasn't a lie at all. He _had_ accomplished his own mission. Megatron hadn't specifically asked him if he'd accomplished the mission that Megatron had sent him to see to. "I trust that you do not want a full _public_ accounting of all the sordid details, however," Starscream added pointedly, and it wasn't a question.

Megatron considered that for a moment, glancing around himself. None of the room's current occupants –- like Skywarp, for instance, who was watching the two of them with surreptitious but avid curiosity, always hungry for gossip to spread around –- knew exactly what Starscream had been up to yesterday evening, and it was better for Megatron's sake if not too much was said now on that particular subject. Starscream had been counting on that.

"Not really," Megatron finally growled distastefully when his gaze returned to Starscream, his eyes raking over him in disgust. He crossed his arms over his massive chest and gave Starscream a very displeased glare for good measure, in payment for Starscream having effectively thwarted his attempt to extract more information. This, too, amused Starscream.

"Good," Starscream said, nodding in satisfaction. And then he pointedly turned his back on Megatron and swept imperiously toward the doors of the bridge. "I'm going to go clean up, then," he announced dismissively over his shoulder. "And then, I am going to sleep for the rest of the day. And I had better not be disturbed," he added threateningly, as the doors slid closed behind him and he made good his escape.


	4. Crash

Swoop awoke to sunlight streaming brightly, swirling with sparkling dust motes, through the row of clerestory windows near the ceiling of her room. It was a reminder of how much she loved the sunniness of her room. She was surprised that Snarl had not fought her for it, even though it was really too small for him.

She also awoke to a very unamused Ratchet, who was scowling down at her. His arms were folded tightly over his bulky chest, and he was bouncing unhappily on his heels. The bouncing was a sure sign of vast displeasure, the kind of displeasure that he usually reserved for Optimus Prime when he was being stupid as well as for certain Lamborghinis pretty much all the time.

_Ouch_ , she thought with a mental wince.

Wheeljack was there, too, peeking warily over Ratchet's shoulder and regarding Swoop with deeply agitated worry.

_Great_ , she mentally sighed.

"Hi?" she ventured uncertainly, aloud. She wasn't at all used to waking up to people crowded around her berth, staring at her.

Swoop recognized that she was in trouble, of course. She had flagrantly disobeyed direct orders, and there were always consequences of that, consequences that she wouldn't be able to escape just because she was a queen, a concept that even now didn't seem quite real to her. Really, Swoop just wasn't sure how much or what kind of trouble she was in yet. If Optimus Prime or, Primus forbid, _Prowl_ ended up joining the party, then she would know that she was in serious trouble, but so far it was just the mother hens.

Which, when she thought about it, was actually sort of worse.

"You were _supposed_ to report directly to the medbay," Ratchet was severely informing her, meanwhile.

Which was true. She'd chosen to disregard Ratchet's request-that-wasn't-a-request and instead returned to the quarters that she shared with her brothers, where she'd been welcomingly hugged by all four of them in turn, nearly crushed by Sludge, in particular. More importantly, she had not been asked any questions whatsoever before…before… The last thing she remembered after having a wash to get rid of the dirt caked on her was snuggling on the couch in the common area, watching a movie with lots of explosions in it, which meant that it was one that Slag had picked. Her head had been resting in Slag's lap, and he'd been absently but very soothingly stroking her head crest, and her feet had been resting on Grimlock. She was pretty sure she'd fallen asleep that way, and it had all been comfortingly _normal_ because she pretty much always fell asleep halfway through a movie, no matter how loud it was, and one brother or another always ended up carrying her off to her berth. Normality like that wasn't going to last, she knew, not now, but while it had lasted, it had been exactly what she'd needed.

Now, Swoop sighed and sat up slowly, feeling woozy and unsettled as she did so. A dull but insistent ache was radiating from her spark chamber, but she knew that this was to be expected, so she was not overly worried about it. Once upright and once the world stopped spinning around her, she pulled her knees into her chest and then looked up at Ratchet, who was still glaring demandingly down at her.

"I know, Ratchet," Swoop said as innocently and contritely as possible, making with the puppy-dog eyes for good measure. They usually worked like a charm on Wheeljack, at least. "I know. And I'm sorry. I just didn't feel like being poked and prodded and asked a lot of…uncomfortable questions."

Ratchet sighed irritably, but his expression softened by a smidgen, his displeased posture relaxed a little, and Swoop suppressed a sigh of relief. Wheeljack, meanwhile, took advantage of the easing-off of tensions and ducked around Ratchet. He plopped himself on the edge of Swoop's berth and then, reaching toward her, he cupped her face in both of his hands, insistently forcing her to look at him.

"Are you all right?" he asked urgently, fearfully, "ears" flaring manically. His face was inches from Swoop's, his gaze boring into her as he eyed her critically. "Did he hurt you?" he demanded to know. "Because if he did, then I swear to Primus I'll hunt him down and tear out some delicate—"

Swoop had to fight to keep from laughing at Wheeljack's ever-deep well of parental concern and protectiveness, had to fight the insane urge to tell him that Starscream had hurt her quite _nicely_ , thank you, which she knew would completely freak him out. She sometimes enjoyed freaking the hell out of Wheeljack, but...not this time. She knew that he had been and apparently still was deeply worried about the whole thing with Starscream. He'd made that very obvious when she had left the Ark, fretting and acting as if he'd never see her again. Laughing at his concern now would be cruel, and Swoop could never be cruel to Wheeljack. She would tease the hell out of him and deliberately freak him out more often than was probably good for his sanity, but she could never be cruel to him.

"Wheeljack, I'm fine!" she interrupted him reassuringly, reaching up to grab each of his hands with one of her own, pulling them away from her face and then squeezing them comfortingly. "Starscream was… He behaved," she added, sincerely. "Really. He didn't hurt me except…where necessary. "

Swoop didn't have the heart to tell Wheeljack that she had very much enjoyed her deflowering, both before and definitely after the comparatively brief interlude of intense pain like she'd never experienced before. Starscream really was just that good. But that was another thing that would freak the hell out of Wheeljack. Not to mention anyone else that she might tell, even one of her brothers. So it was something that she would have to keep to herself forever, and she was perfectly fine with that. 

Meanwhile, Swoop's assurances seemed to remove a huge burden from Wheeljack's shoulders because suddenly he was grabbing her and enveloping her in a tight, relieved hug.

"Oh, thank Primus!" he breathed fervently, clinging to Swoop for a long moment. Then, pulling back from her, hands gripping the sides of her shoulders almost painfully, he added. "I was so worried. We all were. Especially because you were gone for so long. I think even _Prowl_ was a little freaked, by the end."

Swoop smiled at that, knowing that he was exaggerating but not caring at all. And then she heard an explosive snort from the direction of the doorway to her room. Sure enough, Slag had poked his head into the room and was scowling in distaste at the love-fest playing out in front of him.

" _I_ wasn't worried," he announced loftily. When all eyes shifted toward him, he gave Swoop an exaggeratedly weary look, and added, " _Told_ 'em you've kicked Starscream's ass hundreds of times, would just do it again if you had to. Do they listen to me? Noooooo…"

Swoop grinned widely and brightly at him, gave him a thumbs-up, and crowed, "ESAKS, baby!"

Slag responded with a similar wolfish grin and a thumbs-up of his own before pulling his head back, and the door to Swoop's room slid closed again.

Wheeljack looked at Swoop askance.

"ESAKS?" he asked, befuddled.

"Elite Seeker Ass-Kicking Squad," she translated, and then, suddenly feeling tired and very drained, she leaned back against the wall at the head of her berth, while Wheeljack snickered with something like pride.

The unsettled, achy feeling from her spark had increased. Its usually-steady pulse that subtly underscored her life was off, slightly but noticeably. It was randomly racing and then slowing. The fluctuations were making her queasy and not a little light-headed, and she closed her eyes for just a moment, hoping that the sensation would pass. She dimly heard a scuffling sound, and then muted and strangely garbled voices, and then the high-pitched whining whir of a medscanner quite close by. She opened her eyes to see that Wheeljack and Ratchet had suddenly exchanged places. Ratchet was now perched on the edge of her berth, and he was scanning her with a deeply concerned expression on his face while Wheeljack anxiously paced the tight confines of the room.

"What?" Swoop asked indignantly, feebly batting away Ratchet's scanner. "I'm just tired."

"Swoop," Ratchet said calmly but firmly, the tone of his voice compelling her to look at him. He gave her a penetrating, concerned, and very serious look as her gaze met his. "You've been sleeping for almost two days. You shouldn't be tired at all. Plus, you just lost consciousness for about ten minutes."

Swoop just stared at him for a long moment, and then blinked owlishly at him.

"Two days?" she eventually echoed, incredulously, but then she noticed that much of the damaged she'd incurred during her and Starscream's encounter was mostly repaired now, which certainly would have taken more time than the few hours that she'd thought she'd slept. But still... "Unconscious?"

Ratchet nodded, scowling at the scanner's readings, not looking at her.

"Totally down for the count," he confirmed with a brusque nod. "And not three minutes ago, Grimlock oh-so-helpfully informed me," he added acidly, "that you were in some sort of fugue state during those two days because you sometimes didn't seem to know who you were, who _they_ were, or where you were. Once, Snarl found you wandering up and down the corridor, not really awake."

"And Slag said that you kept calling him Starscream," Wheeljack wryly added. "He was a mite insulted."

"Mmmm," Ratchet sourly agreed. "Needless to say, I'll be having a… _discussion_ …with your brothers about taking medical matters into their own hands and deciding to keep everyone else away from you with threats of severe maiming. Once I get _you_ squared away, that is."

Swoop was gaping at both of them, meanwhile, trying to absorb all that they'd said.

"I don't remember any of that," she informed them dumbfoundedly.

"'Course you don't!" Ratchet responded with an exasperated snort. "That's what happens when you're _in a fugue state_!" Then his voice and his entire demeanor softened, and he laid a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Look, Swoop," he said, "I know you did a lot of research about all of this so that you'd know what to expect. But I think that you're forgetting that your origins are not exactly typical, and that your entire physiology isn't typical, so this might not go exactly how it's supposed to go for you. You need to be closely monitored."

Swoop sighed.

"I know, I know," she said quietly, resignedly.

"And I know," Ratchet continued, still softly, "that medics make the very worst patients, but I… Winglet, I need to keep a very close eye on you during all of this. All right? Please? For me?"

Swoop stared at Ratchet, shocked. If he was using pet names – much less saying please! – then he had to be really concerned. Wheeljack used pet names for Swoop and her brothers all the time, usually without even thinking about it, but her other "dad" wasn't nearly so demonstrative. Only when he was really worried did Ratchet get even vaguely sappy. So, Swoop was suddenly worried, too. She tapped the scanner in his hand with a fingertip.

"What's that thing saying that has you so worried, Ratchet?" she asked. "I have a right to know," she added firmly, to head off any arguments he might try to offer.

Ratchet sighed.

"Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, you do." He handed her the scanner and said, "So, you should know that you're experiencing power fluctuations in your spark, some dangerously strong surges and dangerously deep troughs well beyond what should be, so far as we know, happening. And you don't seem to be assimilating energon like you should be, which is why you can hardly stay awake. One of those troughs combined with low energy levels in general is probably what brought on that half-waking state that you were in."

"Oh," Swoop responded, blinking as she assimilated both what Ratchet said and what she was seeing on the scanner. The medic in her saw clearly now why Ratchet was so concerned.

"So," Ratchet continued firmly, "you're off-duty until I say otherwise. We're going straight to the medbay where I'll be running a full, deep-level diagnostic on you to figure out what's happening here. And I'll be keeping you in the medbay for close observation no matter how much Slag threatens to melt my ass. I want to make sure that these odd issues don't have anything to do with…with Starscream being…involved."

Swoop heaved a reluctant sigh. Extended confinement in the medbay was the very last thing that she wanted. But she knew that Ratchet was right, that his…suggestions…were logical and that she should acquiesce. Because this wasn't about what she wanted anymore. If everything had gone according to plan, she was beginning to produce new lives even as they were speaking, and she already felt deeply, instinctively compelled to protect them. At the moment, protecting them meant taking care of herself, even if doing so meant endless days of boredom. So, Swoop nodded at Ratchet, wordlessly signaling to him that she was agreeing with his requests which weren't, of course, requests at all.

"That's my girl," Ratchet said approvingly, squeezing her hand and then using it to pull her to her feet. She swayed a bit, the world spinning around her for a moment, but then it steadied, and she waved away Ratchet's further assistance.

Swoop felt very weak, though, as she walked out of her room, through the common area of her and her brothers' shared quarters, and then out into the corridor. She knew it would be about five weeks before the new sparks were ready to be removed from her, and she wondered if she was going to feel this weak and exhausted and foggy and not-exactly-unpleasantly floaty the entire time. If so, it was still worth it. It just wouldn't be much fun.

The three of them walked slowly, silently, toward the medbay. Swoop was in the middle and Wheeljack and Ratchet were to either side of her, hovering worriedly. It was a short walk to the medbay, though, so Swoop certainly wasn't anticipating trouble.

Unfortunately, trouble seemed to have a way of finding her, wherever she went and whatever she did. And this time, trouble came over her very suddenly, blackness rapidly eating away at the edges of her vision, quickly reducing her field of vision to a very narrow and distorted tunnel, the world spinning crazily again. A rapid series of sharp, stabbing pains lanced out from her spark, and she groaned and staggered from the force of it, crashing headlong into Wheeljack. He absorbed the impact, scooped her up into his arms, and then, without further thought, started running. Dimly, as Swoop lost consciousness, she heard Ratchet's voice up ahead, frantically yelling at people to get the hell out of the way, and she wondered what all the fuss was about.


	5. Rejection

"So you're telling me that this has absolutely nothing to do with Starscream?" Optimus Prime asked, looking up almost in disbelief as he finished reading the brief summary report that Ratchet had plunked down in front of him before he'd flopped down into one of the chairs on the other side of Prime's desk. "You're _sure_ about that?"

Ratchet somehow managed to slump down farther into his chair.

"Yes, Prime. I am 187% certain that Starscream has nothing to do with this," the medic confirmed with a deeply weary sigh. "He apparently did exactly what he needed to do. No more, no less." 

"You sound almost disappointed," Optimus pointed out to him, bemused.

"That's because I _am_ disappointed!" Ratchet answered, testy with frustration and fatigue. "Something like Starscream implanting a virus in Swoop's systems in order to crash her would likely be a relatively simple fix. But this…This, I'm afraid, is—"

"Not a simple fix," Wheeljack dispiritedly finished. He was sprawled in the chair next to Ratchet's. "If it can be fixed at all," he added glumly.

At that, Optimus Prime leaned tiredly back into his own chair and rubbed at his face with one hand.

"So let me see if I understand this correctly," he said after a moment spent gathering his thoughts. "When you two built the Dinobots, you used five of the sparks we'd brought with us from Cybertron."

Ratchet nodded, murmuring a "Yes" when it appeared that Prime was looking for a verbal cue in order to continue his summation.

"But since the sparks were damaged," he continued, "you had to fill in some holes, so to speak."

"Yep," Wheeljack tiredly confirmed. "Their core programming was damaged enough that they wouldn't have been able to merge with a body, so I had to do some re-coding and patching with each of them in order to make them viable. Which was far from simple to do. And because we needed some kick-ass heavy infantry, a chunk of their re-coded core programming is unique to them and...well, animalistic in nature, to match their dinosaur forms. Which, I grant you, wasn't my most brilliant idea ever, in retrospect, but it seems to have turned out for the best in the end."

Prime nodded comprehendingly.

"But now you're telling me that the spark you chose for Swoop used to belong to someone else. A royal."

"A royal _daughter_ , to be precise," Ratchet clarified, nodding. "Who, just as she should now that she's mature and her mother is dead and she has no surviving female relatives, has awakened as the new queen."

"Which," Optimus responded with another nod, "would seem to make sense, given that queens only come from queens, and we all of a sudden have a queen on our hands."

"Mmmm," Ratchet murmured in agreement and then added, "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Swoop used to be the queen's youngest daughter, who was a newborn when the Uprising happened. Some loyal individual, one with extensive medical knowledge, must have removed her spark from her body. And then, since it was very immature, they were able to hide her spark amongst the others in the stasis vault without anyone knowing the difference. They were probably hoping that something like what happened would happen, thus restoring the royal line at some point in the future."

"All right, then," Prime said, nodding, absorbing the information, completely world-changing as it was. But he needed to put that aspect aside for a moment, in order to address the more important problem at hand. "Assuming that all of that is true, what I don't understand is why this is causing such massive problems for Swoop, why she's comatose now."

At that, Ratchet just groaned in both frustration and exhaustion, so Wheeljack took up the narrative.

"It's precisely _because_ her spark is royal," the engineer said wearily. When Prime just regarded him quizzically, he further explained, "It's the one thing that her 'rescuer,' for all of his good intentions otherwise, didn't take into consideration."

Optimus was puzzled for a moment longer...and then it hit him. "She's royal, so she shouldn't be able to be transplanted to a new body." It was the royal caste's Achilles heel, as the humans called it, their particular weakness and one of the reasons why they required a higher level of protection. Which was, in turn, a large part of the warrior caste's reason to exist.

"Right," Wheeljack confirmed. "She was bred in both spark and body from the queen, so from the moment it's existed her spark's been uniquely attuned to a body that, now, no longer exists."

"And so far as we've been able to tell," Ratchet put in, "the only reason why Swoop was able to adapt to a new body _at all_ is ultimately _because_ of the damage her spark sustained when we crashed here. The patches that Wheeljack coded consisted of _civil_ coding, so that allowed her to survive implantation and integration into a new body."

"Only nominally, though," Wheeljack clarified with a sigh that sounded vaguely...guilty. "The patches aren't allowing her to function particularly _well_. Which explains a lot, actually." When Prime just looked expectantly at the engineer, he added, "If you'll recall, Swoop's always been kinda…glitchy. Like for instance she experienced catastrophic near-terminal cascade failure when she was only ten. And then there's the way she's always had random systems failures here and there ever since then, for no apparent reason. It's never been anything as catastrophic as cascade failure, but we couldn't figure out why _any_ of it happened." He sighed and finished, "Until now."

Ratchet nodded in agreement and added, gesturing between Wheeljack and himself, "We always figured there was something wrong with her body or the patch coding somewhere and that it was randomly triggering systems failures, even though every deep-level diagnostic I ever ran turned up nothing and the code-level diagnostics that Wheeljack's run over the years have showed nothing wrong, either."

"It turns out," Wheeljack finished, "that we were looking in the wrong place. It's not Swoop's body or any coding that's the problem. It's her _spark_. Or rather, it's the interaction between all of those things."

"So what you're telling me is that all of this," Optimus clarified, waving at the datapad with Ratchet's report on it, "is because of incompatibility?"

"Yes," Ratchet confirmed. "We never looked for something like that before because we had no reason to think that Swoop's spark was any different from any other non-royal's. But now we know that's not the case at all. So now, it's like a human's body rejecting an incompatible transplanted organ. Only in this case, Swoop's spark is trying to reject her _entire body_ in favor of one that no longer exists. And I'm afraid it's only going to get worse."

"Worse?" Optimus asked. "As in…?"

"As in we could lose her, yes," Ratchet announced bluntly, in answer to Prime's hesitant, unfinished question.

"That's not an option, Ratchet," Prime snapped, stabbing a demanding finger at the medic. "We _need_ her. Without her, we're--"

"I'm well aware of that, Prime," Ratchet acidly answered around a jaw that was suddenly clenched as lingering, latent anger bubbled to the surface. Then, forcibly calming himself, he growled, "As far as _I'm_ concerned, Swoop's value has nothing to do with her social status. She's not... _disposable_. And as much as she's apparently a queen's daughter, she's also _my_ daughter. And Wheeljack's."

Optimus blinked at Ratchet's sudden anger, but then realized that he shouldn't have been so surprised. It was unheard-of for any of their kind to feel parental or familial -- aside from royals, of course -- but for Wheeljack and Ratchet when it came to the Dinobots, the emotions and the attachment definitely existed. Maybe it was the result of human influence or maybe it was just because of the unique nature of the Dinobots' "birth" and the extra work that both of them had had to do to bring them into existence, but Spike had long ago dubbed them the mother hens for good reason. Ratchet wasn't usually as openly devoted to the Dinobots as Wheeljack was, but the parental concern and protective tendencies were very much alive in him, especially where Swoop was concerned, and they arose whenever Ratchet deemed it necessary. So, as usual in these situations, Optimus found himself sighing apologetically.

"I know, Ratchet," he said quietly. "I know. I'm sorry I snapped."

Ratchet's anger bled from him as quickly as it had appeared, and he waved aside Prime's apology.

"It's all right," he said quietly. "Understandable, even, given that we _do_ need her in exactly the way that you meant," he added tiredly. Uncharacteristically, he further added, "And I'm sorry _I_ snapped. I'm just…tired."

Optimus nodded in acknowledgement, even though the apology wasn't necessary as far as he was concerned. He knew that it had been a long stretch of days for Ratchet and Wheeljack, as they had puzzled out what was wrong with Swoop. She had gone fully comatose, her systems beginning slowly but surely to shut down, mere hours after they'd gotten her to the medbay. That had been three days ago, and Ratchet and Wheeljack had spent that time running every scan and test that they could think of and then spending hours interpreting the results until it had all started to come horrifyingly together. Simultaneously, they'd been fighting a constant battle to keep Swoop's vital systems online. Without them, her singular spark would fade, and if that happened then their species' only chance at natural continuance would fade as well. Ratchet hadn't taken a break, much less slept, since Swoop had gone completely unresponsive, and it had been even longer for Wheeljack. They were both stretched to the breaking point, which tended to make Wheeljack depressed and convinced that he was utterly useless as a part-time medic and which tended to make Ratchet much touchier than usual.

"So what's the bottom line here?" Prime wanted to know. "What are we looking at?"

After taking a moment to pinch tiredly at the bridge of his nose, Ratchet answered, "The major problems started right after Swoop returned from her…uh, sojourn with Starscream, so the rejection appears to have greatly intensified and accelerated as a result of the maturation of her spark as well as the fact that it's been infused now. At the moment, I'm fresh out of ideas as to how we might address, much less fix, the problem. She's stable at this very moment, and she's beginning the process of producing new sparks as she should even though her body is shutting down, but…"

Ominous silence fell in the room as Ratchet's voice trailed off, and it lasted for a while. Eventually, though, Wheeljack pushed up out of his chair and began to pace around Prime's office. After a moment or two of pacing, he turned to face Optimus and Ratchet, leveling an uncertain look at both of them.

"I think I might have an idea," he tentatively announced. Then, noticing the look that Ratchet was giving him, he pointed an accusing finger at him and added, "Don't look at me like that, Ratch. I just now thought of it."

"Go, Wheeljack," Optimus said, somewhat urgently, attempting to stave off a potential bickering session between the two. They happened more frequently when one or the other of the two was weary beyond words, and right now they were _both_ weary beyond words. He needed to keep them focused so that Wheeljack's formidable processors could properly nurture his seed of an idea, whatever it was.

Wheeljack was silent for a moment or two, gathering his thoughts. Then he announced, "Like Prime said, the problem here is a whole lot of incompatibility. Swoop's spark is expecting her body to resonate and operate at a certain baseline signature frequency. Not to mention that it's expecting to interact with nanites that have completely different coding. Not to mention that she doesn't have the right core programming. So, especially now that she's mature and...well, breeding...everything's freaking out. Right?"

"Essentially, yes," Ratchet agreed, nodding.

"So," Wheeljack continued, starting to meditatively pace again as he spoke, "it would seem to me that what she needs is a body whose signature frequency matches the one that her spark is expecting to find as well as a nanite template with the proper coding as well as royal core programming. If we can somehow make all that come together, then things should be just peachy, right?"

"Yes," Ratchet agreed readily but skeptically. "Theoretically. We could construct a new body for her easily enough. I know that Sludge conceptualized a redesign for her. He didn't know that she couldn't be transplanted, so he figured that she might want one now, with her change of status and all. You'd just need to engineer it."

Wheeljack nodded.

"Sludge gave me his drawings. I've got it almost completely engineered already." He shrugged sheepishly at the tiredly amused look that Ratchet gave him. "It took my mind off things while she was…away."

Ratchet snorted and continued, "It'll be tricky, not to mention risky, transplanting her when her spark's already under stress. Plus, given what she is, I don't know that transplanting her will even be possible, _especially_ if you have to re-code those patches to make them...more royal, I guess."

"True," Wheeljack said with a long and resigned sigh.

"But on the other hand, if we don't try we're going to lose her, anyway," Ratchet continued. "So, I don't think we have a choice, and if we can make it work at all, it'll be better to do it quickly, before physical production of the new sparks begins in a week or ten days or so. But the odds of finding the precise signature that's needed just by trial and error before it's too late are—"

"Astronomical, yes," Wheeljack supplied agreeably, nodding. "But," he added, holding up a finger to forestall the argument that he knew, from the sudden tension in his posture, that Optimus Prime was about to lob at him, "we don't have to do that totally by trial and error."

Both Optimus Prime and the medic just blinked at him, not following him.

"And how do you figure that, 'Jack?" Ratchet asked.

" _Because_ ," Wheeljack concluded with a long, gusty sigh, "we have access to someone who can give us a very good idea of where to begin. Not to mention someone from whom we can extract nanites with royal coding as well as royal core programming."

Ratchet blinked at Wheeljack for a beat, but then he realized exactly who Wheeljack was talking about.

"Primus!" he explosively responded, repeatedly smacking his own forehead with one hand, not believing he'd completely missed what Wheeljack was suggesting. He decided to chalk it up to exhaustion and being entirely too emotionally close to the situation. "Mirage!"

Wheeljack nodded.

"Their signatures shouldn't be all that different from each other," he said with a shrug. His voice took on a note of tired but ironic amusement when he added, "They _are_ brother and sister, after all."

Optimus Prime made a sudden choking noise at that.

"Oh, he's going to _love_ this," he said, chuckling as he imagined the royal's face when he was given the news. Then he abruptly sat back in his chair when Ratchet swiftly turned away from Wheeljack and gave Prime a ferocious glare.

"Where is he?" Ratchet growled demandingly at Prime, rising from his seat to lean almost threateningly across the desk that separated them. He didn't care one whit about what Mirage was or was not going to love.

"On Cybertron," Prime replied, unimpressed with Ratchet's urgent ire, blinking as he accessed the information. "Long term intel-gathering assignment. Jazz will be able to reach him."

"Then you need to get Jazz's ass working on that right away," Ratchet ordered brusquely. "We need Mirage here _yesterday_."

"I'm on it," Prime replied, already stabbing at the controls of the comm console installed in his desktop. At about the same time, Ratchet's own comm beeped at him.

"You're needed, Ratchet," was all that First Aid said over it, and his voice sounded strained.

"Dammit!" Ratchet explosively responded, knowing that First Aid could only be calling about Swoop. He'd told his younger colleague that he didn't want to hear about anything or anyone else. Launching himself out of his chair, he headed for the door, Wheeljack hard on his heels.

"I'll comm you when Jazz has news," Ratchet heard Prime call out as the door slid closed behind him and he began to run for the medbay.


	6. Persistence of Vision

Starscream awoke fighting the urge to scream. It wasn't a scream of pain or of terror, but the kind of scream that one let loose when one was teetering on the edge of a blinding, all-consuming overload. 

He'd been dreaming of _her_. Again. They were heated, fevered dreams, achingly real. They left his body and his mind deprived, gnawingly unsatisfied, his systems running very hot…and there was nothing that he could do about it. He could only lay there, order the computer to lower the temperature in his quarters dramatically, and then wait, panting and shivering feverishly, hoping that it would all subside.

Either that, or he could find someone upon whom to release the tension to which he found himself awakening, whether they wanted him to or not. But he hadn't resorted to that.

Yet.

Starscream sat up on his berth, knowing from eight days of experience that sleep would elude him now. Blearily consulting his chronometer, he noted that it had been a mere forty-five minutes since he'd shut down. Sighing, weary in both mind and body, Starscream drew his knees into his chest, folded his forearms on top of them, and then rested his forehead on top of his arms. He stayed in that position for more than a few minutes, working at calming himself. It was more difficult to do so than it had been the previous night, just as it had been more difficult to do so the previous night than it had been the night before that.

It was getting worse. _He_ was getting worse. Quickly. Sounds and sensations from the dream lingered still, even though he was fully awake. He could feel her against him, her teeth gnawing at him, her fingers digging into exquisitely sensitive spots that were tingling at him even now. He could hear her still, too, sighing and snarling and whispering wanton, passionate words directly, so it seemed, into his mind. It was maddening.

" _Stop_!" Starscream murmured desperately, shifting position slightly so that he could massage frantic circles into the sides of his head, as if he could somehow drill into it and physically remove whatever it was that was plaguing him. "Stop, stop, stop…" he repeated over and over again, mantra-like, for long minutes as he worked at calming himself.

Slowly, much more slowly than he would have liked, Starscream's mind quieted, his body returning, for now, to not exactly normal but to an at least tolerable state. True normality seemed to have had ceased existing the moment that Ratchet had called regarding Swoop. Starscream was beginning to believe that normal would forever elude him now, that he was existing in a permanently altered state.

Starscream had indulged in extensive research since returning from his encounter with Swoop. He hadn't had time to do so beforehand, given that after Ratchet's call he'd quickly lost touch with most of his sanity, drowned as it quickly became in the overwhelming instinctive desire for Swoop. The problem was that he wasn't entirely certain that his sanity had returned intact. Or at all. It should have, at least so his research told him. He now thoroughly understood even the minutest details of what was known of the nature and purpose of royal imprinting, and he knew that it should have lasted at most a day or two after he had fulfilled his obligation to Swoop. He should no longer be feeling a need to think of her, should no longer be reliving the things that they had done with and to each other, and he definitely shouldn't be feeling a subconscious desire for her that, insidiously, was now starting to bleed over into a conscious desire for her.

It was unacceptable. He wanted it to stop. But since what he was experiencing was not normal – at least, nothing like it had ever been recorded, so far as his research went – he had no idea how to make it stop. Nor could he talk to anyone about it. Doing so would require revealing to that other individual information that they couldn't know. He would be endangering not only them but himself. The only individuals that he could conceivably talk to about the situation were Megatron and Soundwave, and neither option appealed. 

A desperate and increasingly insane part of him felt a need to put in an illicit call to Ratchet, to somehow contrive to meet face-to-face with the Autobots' medic. He could actually talk to him about the situation, at least, whereas he couldn't talk to any Decepticon. And because he was a medic, a civil, Ratchet would have information and knowledge to which Starscream wasn't privy, that he wasn't even aware existed. Yes, it was a very tempting notion to have a nice, long chat with that particular Autobot. But he hadn't resorted to that.

Yet.

For the moment, all Starscream could do was to attempt to distract himself. He'd tried many means of doing so, but the only thing that had worked so far had been baiting Megatron into an argument that had devolved into some fairly severe physical violence. Starscream hadn't intended this as an attempt to distract himself. It was just that his condition had shortened his fuse and significantly reduced the amount of patience he had, especially when it came to patience for Megatron. So it had been through sheer serendipity that Starscream had learned that pain silenced, for a blessedly long time, the thoughts, sensations, and visions that were pounding more and more often through his mind, slowly eating away at his sanity. The pain and its resulting quiet had been a welcome relief, giving him both an anchor in reality as well as an idea. 

Now, if he couldn't quiet himself in any other way, Starscream had an experiment planned out. It was one that didn't involve Megatron but that would, hopefully, achieve an equally satisfying result. He had decided that a quiet mind, however briefly it remained quiet, was well worth whatever pain he had to inflict upon himself.

Since he had managed to calm himself this time, Starscream didn't have to resort to such lengths. Yet. He was still keyed-up, though. Although exhausted, the result of a week without anything like enough sleep, a strange energy crackled through him anyway, leaving him tingling and restless. So, as had become his habit, Starscream hauled himself off of his berth and went for a walk.

It was the middle of the stretch of time that the Decepticons had arbitrarily deemed the night cycle, even though it was actually the middle of the afternoon, local time. Few Decepticons were about. Those who were awake were either at their duty stations or likely up to clandestine nocturnal activities of various sorts that kept them from clogging the corridors. Still, Starscream passed a few comrades here and there, many of them the same ones that he often passed on these restless, dead-of-night wanderings. They no longer seemed surprised to see him prowling the corridors in a somewhat aimless manner. They dipped their heads in respectful acknowledgement, a gesture that he offhandedly acknowledged in return when it occurred to him that he should do so, and then they averted their gazes, going on about their business.

As usual, after about an hour of aimless wandering, Starscream found himself on the bridge. Soundwave, the watch commander, seemed thoroughly unsurprised to see him when he planted himself next to the chair that Soundwave was sitting in. Showing up for watch many hours too early had become a recurring trend for Starscream. Soundwave merely turned his head to look up at Starscream as he gazed dully at the viewscreen that dominated the bridge. As usual, it showed a benign view of the abyssal depths of the ocean outside, illuminated only by the light that Headquarters itself generated.

Starscream wasn't seeing the image on the viewscreen, though. Other things were flashing through his mind, his walk obviously not having purged everything even temporarily from his processors. There were images of Swoop, of the expressions on her face when they had been together. There were echoes of the enticing, erotic sounds that she'd made. There were memories of the feel of her small, overheated body firmly pinned beneath his own, and of her fingers scratching and scraping demandingly at him, and of the heights of ecstasy to which they'd repeatedly, almost effortlessly, driven each other.

Starscream had begun to suspect that Swoop was far more devious than he had given her credit for. She was a medic, after all, and perhaps she had done something to him while they'd been together, intimately connected, something that he hadn't noticed because he'd been too otherwise-occupied for his own good. Perhaps she had engineered whatever-it-was such that he'd slowly go insane, if exhaustion and energy deprivation didn't do him in first, thus effectively removing him from the ranks of the Decepticons. It would be an irony indeed if Starscream had refrained from killing Swoop quickly and mercifully only to have her destroy him in this slow and torturous manner.

As it was, Starscream couldn't rest for more than an hour or, at most, two at a stretch. He regarded his berth with growing revulsion because the dreams were so much more real and solid and deeply disturbing than the phantom echoes of them that were beginning to plague his waking hours. And more and more often the mere thought of taking in energon made him want to purge. He was avoiding it now, ignoring the advisories that were trickling into his processors. Already, Starscream was becoming increasingly distracted and inattentive during his waking hours, no matter how hard he fought to hold himself together. It was a combination of the waking dreams and the clawing exhaustion wrought by lack of sleep and energon. 

It was, perhaps, a good thing that Megatron was currently between grand schemes. Starscream had no desire to face down Autobots in his distracted condition. On the other hand, the fact that Megatron was mostly idle at the moment meant that he had liberty to notice that Starscream wasn't quite right. He hadn't confronted him directly about it, yet, but Starscream had certainly noticed the speculative and calculating looks that Megatron was leveling at him far more regularly than he liked. He knew that it was only a matter of time before Megatron would be in his face. And that would be bad.

"Conscience," Soundwave suddenly droned from out of nowhere, hauling Starscream out of his thoughts. It was a welcome distraction, actually. Still, Starscream knew that he had to be very careful around Soundwave. At the moment, his mind was relatively quiet, under control. Should that change, he would need to remove himself from Soundwave's vicinity post-haste. There was no need to add more fuel to Megatron's fire, fuel that Soundwave would be only too happy to provide. Now, Starscream regarded Soundwave curiously.

"What?" he asked of the spy.

"Your conscience troubles you," Soundwave answered evenly. His lack of vocal inflection made it difficult to tell whether he was asking a question or simply making an observation. Starscream chose to interpret his words as the latter, and of course Soundwave was referring to Swoop and to what he was supposed to have done to her.

"I assure you that my conscience is quite clear, Soundwave," Starscream answered tiredly but firmly. "I did my duty, and I did it gladly." Every word was perfectly true, even. He and Soundwave simply weren't talking about the _same_ duty. Starscream's version of duty was a higher one, even though his motives were selfish. And even though he was experiencing some fairly severe weirdness at the moment, he still knew that he'd made the right decision. He did not and would not regret it even if the consequences of it ultimately destroyed him.

Soundwave, meanwhile, made a small, noncommittal noise that Starscream wasn't quite sure how to interpret. In fact, he wasn't sure why Soundwave was speaking to him at all about this subject. Was he sympathizing, or was he merely digging for information, hoping to catch him off guard, hoping that he'd blab something incriminating that Soundwave could then give to Megatron like a gift? If that was the case, Starscream was determined that Soundwave was out of luck. He didn't trust Soundwave half as far as a squishy could throw him. Even though he was half-insane at the moment, Starscream's guard would never be down around Soundwave.

"It is…surprising," Soundwave uttered.

"Oh yes," Starscream answered acidly. "It's an utter shock to the system when I actually do what I'm told, isn't it?" Even though he hadn't done what he was told, but Soundwave didn't need to know that.

Soundwave just looked at the Seeker levelly.

"Indeed," he intoned.

Starscream snorted in response. "Damned if I do, damned if I don't," he said resignedly. It was the story of his life.

"Indeed," Soundwave repeated, and Starscream could have sworn that this time there was a note of amusement in his otherwise fathomless voice.

"Shut up," Starscream growled.

And then he stomped off to one of the other stations on the bridge, all of which were unoccupied at this time of the night watch. His own watch didn't start for another three hours yet and, for lack of anything better to do, he decided to use those hours to dig through ancient records and databases. Again. He knew that it was a fruitless endeavor. He knew that there wasn't any information in the databases that he had not already read a hundred times, but he had hope that the activity would keep the hallucinations at bay.

For a little while, at least.


	7. Rebirth

The lights in the room were dim, but Swoop's new body gleamed nevertheless, catching even the wan lighting. Mirage, lost in thought, was absently circling the berth upon which it was laid out, waiting like Frankenstein's monster to be brought to life. 

He had to admit that the body was beautiful, fit for a queen. It was all graceful curves and angles and narrow limbs in navy blue, brushed silver, and gold that seemed to draw light to it rather than merely to reflect it. There were small accents of red here and there, too: the Autobot sigil, the red crosses on the outsides of the shoulders that marked the occupant as a medic. The wings, in that light-catching gold now instead of silver, were flexible and gracefully back-curved, tapering to long, delicate points. The seams along which they folded created an intricate visual pattern across their width. Small, decorative designs and glyphs in both brushed silver and the same shimmering gold as the wings looped along the body here and there, contrasting with the deep blue surrounding them. Such decoration was something that had gone out of fashion long ago, seen as meaningless frivolity in a time of war, but it had been quite common among especially the royal caste before the war. Before the Uprising. Before his… _their_ mother's death. Mirage thought the designs fitting now, for Swoop.

Mirage also had to admit that even though he instinctively resisted the notion of a Dinobot having refined tastes and talent, he had to acknowledge that Sludge did indeed have an eye for beauty, and it was also apparent that he harbored not a little sentimentality and had obviously done some research. Some of the designs and glyphs that trailed along Swoop's new body were the very same ones that had adorned his… _their_ mother. The result was a reflection, both of the parent that Mirage had lost and that Swoop had never known as well as of the hope, long thought lost, that Swoop now represented for their future.

If, of course, she survived the next few hours. And that, if Ratchet's worry-camouflaging abrasiveness and Wheeljack's outright manic fretting were any indication, was not a sure thing.

Mirage wasn't sure how he felt about that. He'd come back – very reluctantly – to Earth. He'd given serious consideration to the notion of refusing to do so, bristling as always at being ordered about by a mere civil, but in the end he'd been deeply curious, and the curiosity had won out. Jazz had told him that something huge had happened and that he was needed, but he wouldn't say precisely what had happened or why he, specifically, had been needed. Jazz would only tell him that he'd be briefed upon his arrival. Mirage hadn't expected to be briefed by _Ratchet_ , of all individuals, and he certainly hadn't at all expected what Ratchet had told him in typical Ratchet fashion: Bluntly, bordering on tactlessly. He wasn't one to mince words, particularly not when he was as exhausted as he obviously had been. The medic's blunt straight-forwardness was a trait that, in general, Mirage perversely appreciated, accustomed as he used to be to delicate, evasive deference whenever anyone had had to impart to him bad or upsetting news. When it came to the news about Swoop, though, Mirage almost wished that it had been delivered with just a bit of mincing.

It occurred to Mirage that his life being upended and then abruptly veering off in a completely unexpected direction was something of a disturbing trend, but this time it had happened in a way that was almost more difficult to deal with than the previous upheaval. When his family, his whole society, had been destroyed, at least Mirage had known exactly what to feel in response. Rage, sadness, and not a little guilt that he he'd been halfway around the planet had dominated his reaction. He'd spent many years agonizing about what had happened, certain that he might have been able to do something about the situation had he only been there. He _still_ berated himself for not realizing what was going to happen long before it had happened. There had been clues here and there, very obvious in hindsight, but at the time he had written them off because he'd been every bit as arrogantly certain as his mother had been that the warriors could never rebel, could never turn on them, that it wasn't _possible_ for them to do so. 

But they _had_ done so, and in the years following the Uprising, guilt and a need for retribution of some sort, _any_ sort, eventually drove Mirage to humble himself and join the Autobot cause. Subjecting himself to authority wasn't something that he'd ever had to do, but he had done it because, while he had been devastatingly blind and arrogant and hadn't been able to do anything for his family while they'd been hunted down and slaughtered, the Autobots were at least dedicated to thwarting the individual who had led the hunting and slaughtering. His own humbling was a very small penance, but it had been a place to start.

But in this case, Mirage didn't have the luxury of knowing how to react to the situation. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel, what he was supposed to think. He wasn't even certain that all of Ratchet's theorizing about Swoop was correct. So the only thing that Mirage felt now was confusion. He had resigned himself to being alone in the universe but for one loathsome other. For thousands of years, he'd considered himself truly the last of his breed, knowing that when he died there would be nothing left of a dynasty that had existed, unbroken, for untold eons. Except that he apparently wasn't the last of his breed. Not anymore. In fact, if Ratchet was right, he hadn't been alone all along. His youngest sister had existed as a disembodied spark in a stasis vault on Cybertron for millennia, waiting for someone to find her, to live again, and now...Now, she existed in the body of a Dinobot. Mirage hadn't quite assimilated that notion yet, even though he'd been back on Earth and fully informed about the situation for a week now.

During that time, events had progressed quickly. Once Ratchet and Wheeljack had gleaned from Mirage whatever the information was that they'd needed in order to create a body for Swoop that would, at least in theory, be acceptable to her spark, that new body had been hurriedly but oh-so-carefully constructed, in a matter of a day and a half. It had required a group effort overseen by a clearly exhausted Wheeljack, with everyone available, even their human allies, pitching in. Such extreme haste had been necessary because Swoop's condition had begun deteriorating rapidly, systems shutting down left and right such that Ratchet and the other medics had been barely able to keep one step ahead of them until, finally, they could do no more and her vital systems had completely shut down, leaving entirely dependent on outside equipment to keep her alive, and that equipment wouldn't be able to do so for long. 

At any moment, Mirage knew, the medics would come barreling through the door with Swoop, to accomplish her transplantation. It was an extremely risky procedure, given her condition. And given who and what she was, there were no guarantees that it would work at all, that all of their collective hard work would pay off, but it was clear that there was no other choice.

They had nothing left to lose, after all.

As if on cue, the doors to the room swept apart and Ratchet, Wheeljack, and a few assistants burst through them, pushing a berth bearing Swoop and toting the equipment that, at the moment, was all that was keeping her alive. Mirage, without being told, scuttled away from the berth containing Swoop's new body and pressed himself against a convenient wall. Part of him insisted that he should leave, that he'd be in the way, and that this wasn't something that he wanted to see anyway. The rest of him insisted that he should stay, that he should be there for the sister that he hadn't known that he still had until a few days ago, that he should witness her phoenix-like rebirth…or her death. In the end, since none of the medics insisted that he leave, Mirage stayed where he was, pressed against the wall, settling in as best he could to observe.

Given the amount of time and effort that had led up to it, the actual transplantation procedure seemed at first to progress easily and didn't seem very complicated. Then again, Ratchet always made even the most complex of procedures seem absurdly effortless, as if just anyone could do what he did. Which, of course, could not have been farther from the truth. _No one_ could do some of the things that Ratchet could do, though Ratchet's younger colleagues, including Swoop, had been doing their best to learn from his many millennia of accumulated knowledge. Still, none of them were near to Ratchet's league yet.

So, under Ratchet's careful ministrations, things seemed to go well…at the start. Mirage couldn't see much of anything that went on from his vantage point, since there were milling medics between him and Swoop's berth, but when he heard the monitors and the equipment that had been sustaining Swoop's body shut down with a fading whine, he knew that Swoop's spark had been disconnected from her body. Then there was a flurry of rapid but controlled movement as medics shifted quickly but carefully out of Ratchet's way. As they moved, Mirage caught a glimpse of Swoop's spark chamber cradled protectively in Ratchet's hands. Her spark was swollen, straining at the protective arms that encased it, just barely beginning the physical process of producing new sparks, and it was dimly glowing a dull shade of yellow.

Mirage winced at it, partly because of the sickly yellow color rather than the deep, shimmering gold that it ought to be, but mostly because he felt his own spark jolt and then shift and flutter in faint recognition. It was like calling to a like thought long lost, and it rammed home the fact that Ratchet was right about who Swoop really was. In that moment, Mirage knew that Swoop wasn't a Dinobot who'd somehow, miraculously, managed to mutate into a queen in their hour of need, as some part of him had absurdly been hoping was the case. In that moment, Mirage knew that Swoop was, indeed, his sister and that her status, other than the fact that she still existed at all after Megatron's massacre and the long intervening years of a devastating war as their society tore itself apart at the seams, was not miraculous but simply as it should be.

Mirage found himself gasping for breath, suddenly overwhelmed. There was relief in the confusing jumble of emotions that he was experiencing. There was happiness that, if Swoop survived, his long, solitary existence was over. But there was also unease and uncertainty. And guilt, as he recalled things that he'd said about Swoop, some of them directly to her face. Mirage closed his eyes then and rested the back of his head wearily against the wall behind him as he contemplated what he could possibly say to her now and whether or not she could ever forgive him and what he would do if she would not…until monitors started blaring again, singing the wailing song of a spark in deep distress.

The sound catapulted Mirage out of his reverie, and his entire body jerked forward a few steps, completely on impulse. The only thing that stopped him from stumbling all the way over to Swoop's side was a warning glare from Ratchet as he frantically made adjustments to parts of Swoop's innards that Mirage couldn't see and the other medics fluttered around him like a cloud of electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus, doing arcane medical things.

"Wheeljack!" Ratchet barked suddenly.

"Working on it," the engineer tersely answered as he frantically typed code into the console in front of him, which was linked to one of Swoop's interface ports so that Wheeljack had access to her core programming.

Wheeljack was adjusting on the fly the patches that he'd coded years ago, when Swoop had first been created, the very patches that bypassed and replaced the damaged portions of Swoop's core programming and that had subsequently allowed her to be transplanted as an unexpected by-product. He'd extracted some royal core programming from Mirage in order to refine and augment the existing patches, making them a hybrid of civil and royal programming. Mirage recalled Wheeljack saying something about not knowing exactly what adjustments, if any, would be required until Swoop's spark began trying to interface with her new body. Apparently, adjustments were required, and making them was a race against time, as monitors blared dire warnings and the medics, Ratchet included, did their level best not to glare urgently at the frantically-typing engineer. Wheeljack was all that stood now between Swoop and death.

After a minute or so, during which Mirage began to pace around his small corner of the room, Ratchet gave the monitors a very displeased look and then urgently growled at Wheeljack, "Work _faster_."

"Shut up," Wheeljack ground out in response, not taking his eyes off of the screen in front of him. Then, unbearably long moments later, he mashed a final key on the console with urgent finality and loudly announced, "There!"

At exactly the same moment, the monitors' warnings crescendoed to a keening climax, becoming a steady, constant whine instead of frantic, rhythmic beeping, and Swoop's body heaved an almighty jerk, nearly leaping off the berth before going utterly still. The monitors continued to whine for a moment that seemed to go on forever, but then, agonizingly slowly, they began to settle into less-frantic beeping. Indicators that had been glowing an angry, distressed red slowly muted to yellow and then over the course of several minutes settled into mellow green.

"She's stabilizing," Ratchet breathed, just loudly enough to be heard over the monitors, the relief in his voice intense and obvious, mirroring the feelings of everyone in the room. His entire body sagged suddenly, and he would have fallen flat on his behind had First Aid not reflexively grabbed onto him to steady him.

Wheeljack flopped back in his seat and cast a deeply thankful look at the ceiling. Then he turned a weary gaze on Ratchet and asked the medic if he wanted to flip a coin to see who'd go talk to Optimus. Ratchet grimaced and muttered something about waiting to make sure that Swoop was really all right first and that maybe that might possibly take five days. Wheeljack grunted tiredly in amused agreement. Mirage, meanwhile, slumped against the wall behind him, sinking down against it until his rear met the floor. Folding his arms over his bent knees, he rested his forehead wearily against them, not realizing until just that moment how tired he was, how little he'd rested since his return to Earth. He stayed in that position, lost in his own thoughts, for he knew not how long, until soft noises prompted him to shift his attention back to what was going on around him.

He blinked blearily at Swoop's berth, saw that both Wheeljack and Ratchet were leaning intently over her, that Wheeljack had one of her hands clutched in both of his. It took Mirage a moment to realize that they were talking to her and she to them. The latter took Mirage an extra moment to recognize because she sounded…different. It dawned on him that she now sounded almost exactly like their mother, the same rich contralto that she'd had, that could alternately ring with intimidating authority or shimmer with playful amusement, and he had to fight to suppress a shudder. 

All of it, everything, was too much to deal with too soon. Memories that he'd buried deep in his psyche in order to preserve his sanity in the wake of the massacre were surfacing, creeping all unwelcome into the forefront of his thoughts. Memories of the aftermath of the massacre, when he'd come home and seen the devastation…the bodies, even of the little ones… Now, hearing Swoop's voice, so much like their mother's, the memories and everything else became overwhelming. He sat in a pathetic huddle on the floor, shuddering involuntarily but uncontrollably, staring over at Swoop, listening to what she and Wheeljack and Ratchet were saying without really hearing the words, taking in the varying expressions that passed in rapid succession over Swoop's face as she struggled to absorb what she was hearing, and an undeniable urge to escape overtook him. He jerked to his feet, the sound of his back scraping against the wall behind him as he stood drew the attention of everyone in the room, all eyes suddenly fixed on him. But Mirage saw only Swoop. Their gazes locked together, gold to gold, for a long moment.

The look on Swoop's face was, unsurprisingly, one of deep confusion. Ratchet had bombarded her with a vast quantity of bluntly-delivered information, answering the dazed and bewildered questions that had begun to spew out of her as soon as she had regained consciousness. All of it was no doubt overwhelming for her, probably far more overwhelming than it was for Mirage. And on top of that, she'd awakened to find herself in a new body, which Mirage had always imagined would be excessively disorienting, and he was glad that he'd never have to experience it. Swoop's reeling expression as her gaze met Mirage's reflected all of this.

But there was also a touch of something that was perhaps horror in her expression, as Swoop stared mutely at Mirage. Mirage supposed that he should have expected it, that he'd even earned it, but it still wasn't something that he wanted to deal with at the moment, on top of everything else. So, turning his back on Swoop, Mirage stumbled gracelessly toward the doors, and he sighed in relief as they slid closed behind him and as he leaned against them for a long moment. He knew that he couldn't avoid her – _his sister_ – forever, but he could avoid her for now, at least until he could collect himself, until he could rein in the memories and emotions that were assaulting him. Still, he fancied that he could feel Swoop's golden gaze burning into his back like an accusation, and he felt like the worst of cowards. He knew that, soon, he and Swoop would need to have a talk. Likely, a very long one. But that wasn't going to happen right now. Right now, Mirage chose to escape, to hide.

It was, he bitterly realized, what he did best.


	8. Fight or Flight

Sounds floated around Starscream, an impenetrable and incomprehensible miasma that weighed on him in exactly the way that a miasma should not weigh on anyone. It didn't make sense, but since nothing made sense to him anymore, this wasn't surprising to him. The sounds that comprised the impossibly weighty miasma were words, though. He knew that much. Or at least, they should have been words, but they sounded like so much gibberish to him. Still, he knew that they were words to which he was supposed to be paying attention, and he was trying to do so because they were words that were, theoretically, important. Words said at mission briefings were generally important. Except that they weren't important, not to him. They might once have been important, but not anymore. The individual saying the words might once have been important, too, but not anymore. 

Nothing was as important as desperately clinging to the one vanishingly-small sliver of sanity that Starscream still had in his possession but that, even now, was slowly, inexorably slipping from his grasp, hour by hour, minute by minute. Starscream was no longer certain that he was awake at any given moment in time. He was no longer certain that he was ever, in fact, awake, that he wasn't simply lingering in some hallucination-plagued psychotic catatonia, entirely divorced from reality. Whatever reality was, of course. It wasn't as if he could remember anymore. 

Inflicting massive amounts of pain on himself no longer had any effect. Even channeling concentrated bursts of energy directly into his spark, for all that it was excruciatingly painful – He could now sympathize with _her_ – hadn't stopped the hallucinations even for a few minutes. And it also hadn't killed him. The glorious release of death had been Starscream's goal the first time he'd thought of attempting that particular tactic, as he'd gathered his courage and followed through with his plan. Afterwards, he had been utterly horrified to discover that he still existed. Multiple reiterations of the experiment and the resulting cascades of intense agony only yielded the same results. It appeared that he could do nothing _but_ exist, despite his best efforts to remove himself from the universe.

The corner of Starscream's mind that housed the spark of a scientist wanted to chew on the question of why in the universe he was still alive, why something that by all rights should have destroyed him in a spectacular fashion somehow hadn't harmed him in the slightest. But that part of him was almost entirely drowned out by _her_ now. Everything was drowned out by _her. She_ was a constant. _The_ constant. Starscream was hyperaware of her all the time, every nanosecond of every day. He knew exactly where she was relative to his own position, to the nanometer, at any given moment. Sometimes, he fancied that he could tell what she was doing or saying or even thinking. She insistently pulled at him like gravity, as if she had become a black hole, the event horizon of which he'd crossed a month ago now. So now there was just a slow, inevitable degeneration until, with brutal mercy, she finally crushed him. Which was a moment that he could only hope would come very soon.

But until that blessed moment arrived, she merely plagued him, whispering a constant litany in his mind and haunting every one of his senses. He felt her, tasted her, heard her, smelled her, saw her. _Everywhere_. All the time. For all that he knew, in the tiny bit of his rational mind that still existed, that she was thousands of kilometers away, she was at times as present and as tangible to Starscream as the chair in which he was currently sitting, and there was no escaping her. There was nowhere that he could hide from her because she – or at least the need for her, the want of her – had become an integral part of him even though she was forever dancing out of reach and laughing at him while she did so. Untouchable. So close and yet so very, very far away.

A nudge to Starscream's flank brought his wandering, distracted attention back to semi-coherence, semi-awareness. The nudge had come from Thundercracker, of course. He was seated placidly on Starscream's right, and he was surreptitiously giving him that look, that frighteningly penetrating look of his that, until very recently, Starscream hadn't realized was quite so penetrating, quite so damned perceptive. He was highly aware of it now, though. It was as if Thundercracker could see into his very spark and glean all of its secrets. Starscream supposed that this talent of Thundercracker's was a natural outcome of being the so-called quiet one, the imperturbable buffer who sat immovably between Skywarp and Starscream and between the three of them and the rest of the Decepticons, the rest of the universe. He was their anchor, and he was one of the few individuals in the Decepticon ranks who knew much but said very little. He was like Soundwave that way. Only much less scary. And with a better voice. 

It was apparent to Starscream that Thundercracker was aware that something wasn't quite right with him, and he'd been sticking to him like glue since he'd realized that Starscream wasn't quite right. Starscream acknowledged that, likely, Thundercracker wasn't the only one who knew that he wasn't quite right, for he was certain that it had to be blazingly obvious even to the most moronic of those who surrounded him. But Starscream figured that Thundercracker was likely the only one who cared, or at least that he was likely the only one who wasn't spending all of his free time trying to figure out how to use Starscream's current, deeply addled mental state against him. Thundercracker was watching him closely, but for some perverse reason Thundercracker's watching was comforting rather than threatening. Starscream felt as if he had to watch his own back less because Thundercracker was already watching it, as he always did. Even when he grumbled about it, as he always did.

Over the past couple of weeks, in desolate moments of semi-sane quasi-clarity, Starscream had seriously considered the notion of confiding in Thundercracker. Since his trinemate was a watcher, he also tended to be a good listener, and if one could get Thundercracker to say anything at all, one came to realize and to appreciate the fact that he had an intelligence that was almost as penetrating as the looks that he could give. He was, therefore, a good one with whom to bounce around ideas, as Starscream knew somewhere, vaguely, that he had done on occasion in the past.

But in this case, confiding in Thundercracker would be dangerous. For both of them, naturally, but more so for Thundercracker because it was likely that he wanted to continue to live. But that wasn't what had stopped Starscream from blabbing everything to his trinemate. No, in the end the thing that had stayed his hand was that, often, what was told to Thundercracker ended up being found out by Skywarp. And what Skywarp found out had a curious habit of being blabbed to absolutely _everyone_. And that just wouldn't be good. So, Starscream continued to suffer alone, and poor Thundercracker would just have to settle for giving him speculative looks. And timely nudges, when prudent.

Prompted by this latest nudge from his curiously faithful trinemate, Starscream looked up from his rapt and very detailed inspection of the scratched tabletop in front of him to find himself eye-to-eye with a very disgruntled-looking and expectant Megatron. He spouted some gibberish. At least, it sounded like so much gibberish to Starscream, although he was certain that, in the reality from which he was almost wholly divorced, Megatron had said perfectly coherent words, no doubt a demand for an explanation for his inattentiveness or something of that sort. But it didn't matter. Because for some reason, the look on Megatron's face sparked in Starscream only vast and completely inappropriate amusement, and before he knew what was happening, he was laughing. Loudly.

It was exactly the wrong thing to do. Dimly, as if from far, far away, Starscream heard Megatron emit Enraged Noise #847 in his repertoire of approximately a thousand distinctly different enraged noises. Number 847 was a particularly bad one, one that had always boded very ill for Starscream. In fact, it was one that, now that he thought about it, Megatron reserved pretty much solely for him. Perversely, now, it only made him laugh harder.

Moments later, there was a flurry of intense movement erupting all around Starscream, as Decepticons barreled _en masse_ for the exit, as if they were a flock of birds and someone had spooked them. Whether they left because they had been so ordered or merely because they didn't want to be caught in the crossfire, Starscream didn't know. Or much care, really. The only individual who didn't flee was, unsurprisingly, Thundercracker. He stood up, but he otherwise didn't move, his fists clenching and unclenching indecisively, his gaze nervously flitting from Megatron to Starscream, back and forth. Starscream almost had to admire his foolish courage in the face of Megatron's obvious displeasure, but in the end, he jerked his head toward the door, silently indicating to Thundercracker that he, too, should leave.

Thundercracker frowned down at him, clearly not liking the idea of leaving Starscream alone to face Megatron's wrath, but in the end he behaved like a proper Decepticon for once in his life and saved his own hide, heading for the door. But he did make it a point to do so in a slow, calm, collected, and decidedly reluctant manner, sending a very clear message to Megatron that Starscream was certain that he would pay for in some manner, later. Thundercracker gave Starscream one last reproachful look over his shoulder before leaving.

Once the doors slid closed in Thundercracker's wake, Megatron turned back to Starscream. He'd gathered his few remaining wits by then, quieting himself and trying to push away the constant noise in his mind so that he could concentrate on Megatron, so that he could hear and understand whatever he might say. Megatron had calmed himself as well, at least on the surface. One rarely knew what was boiling in him just under the surface until it came spewing out of him in all its glory. For a long moment, though, Megatron seemed content simply to stare at Starscream appraisingly, eyes narrowed and glowing dangerously. The moment seemed to stretch on forever before he said anything. And while Megatron stared, Starscream slowly, unthreateningly, got to his feet. His mind was hazy, cloudy, and he wasn't entirely present, but enough of him was there to comprehend the notion that he might need to move, and quickly, in the very near future. Best to be prepared.

Slowly, Megatron folded his arms over his broad chest, the room's pale lighting seeming to accent the huge black fusion cannon mounted on his forearm. And then he spoke, his voice deceptively quiet. When Megatron went quiet, Starscream knew that he needed to be on high alert, and that was somewhat difficult at the moment, as distracted as he was.

"What," Megatron asked, almost softly, "is the matter with you, Starscream?"

Starscream hesitated before he answered, kept hesitating for as long as he thought he could get away with it. In his addled mind, he was trying to decide how best to answer Megatron's very simple question. In the end, he decided to try something entirely new: The truth. The truth was simple, and at the moment, simple was just about all that Starscream could handle. This was the level to which he, always a consummate master of weaving a multidimensional web of deceit and lies, had been reduced. It was an irony that was not lost upon him.

" _Her_ ," Starscream muttered quietly, his voice shook in a very pathetic sort of way around the single word. Even as he said it, he could hear her laughing at him in his mind, and he had to fight the urge to tell her, aloud and indignantly, to shut up.

At that, Megatron stared at Starscream for a long beat…and then he laughed. Long and hard. It wasn't a pleasant sound at all.

"So Soundwave wins that bet," Megatron announced to no one once he'd collected himself, and when Starscream just gave him a quizzical look in response, he added, "Tell me, were you stupid enough not to…take care of her…before you killed her, then?" he asked. "Because you should be over this by now, Starscream. It's been…what? A month?"

"You think I don't know that?" Starscream growled peevishly at him. "You think I _want_ to be like this?"

Megatron barked a humorless laugh and asserted, "Knowing you as I do, Starscream, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if you did." At that, Starscream glared at him, but Megatron didn't respond, his expression instead turning thoughtful and speculative. "Still, I need you…not crazy. I need you awake and alert. Since she's dead – She _is_ dead, yes?" he asked, nonchalantly interrupting himself, and there was suddenly a knife in his voice.

Starscream regarded Megatron squarely, raising his chin to lock their gazes, and unflinchingly lied, "Of course."

Megatron nodded and continued, "Since she's dead, perhaps you should consider someone else. It might not work, or it might work quite well. And if I'm not mistaken, Thundercracker seemed willing enough just a…"

Megatron's voice trailed off as the conference room's doors slid unexpectedly apart and Soundwave strode with his customary aplomb through them. He gave Starscream a long and, so it seemed, deeply speculative look, and the look froze him, sent shivers dancing through his frame as dread suddenly and completely consumed him.

Without pausing even for half a beat, Soundwave strode over to the controls of the room's currently-inactive vidscreen. Almost nonchalantly, he dropped the cassette form of one of his minions into the console, and the vidscreen came immediately to life, displaying the images that whichever of the cassettes it was had recorded. Soundwave gave Megatron a look that was nothing if not smug, and then he turned an even more smug – if that was even possible – look on Starscream.

Because, of course, the cassette had recorded footage of her. And according to the timestamp in one corner of the image, that footage had been recorded a mere six hours ago. Starscream's innards lurched at the sight of Swoop, his gaze riveted to the vidscreen as memories of their encounter immediately began to flood his mind and senses, effectively shunting aside warnings about the extreme danger that he knew that he was in now. For long moments, though, no one moved. No one made a sound. Not Starscream, not Megatron, not Soundwave. All three of them simply stared at the image on the screen, watching Swoop as she glided and banked gracefully, perhaps even joyously. For some bizarre reason, Starscream fleetingly wondered whether the Autobots had actually let her out of her cage or if she'd managed to sneak out. The new sparks she carried had to be near ready for removal, so he couldn't imagine the former happening.

It also occurred to Starscream that Swoop looked completely different. Her form was sleek, stylized and streamlined where once it had been boxy, primitive, and somewhat clumsy. Her color scheme was altered in a most pleasing fashion, too, now all dark blue, silver, and shimmering gold that sparkled dazzlingly where it caught the brilliant sunlight, especially along her very pretty wings. Her coloring was reminiscent of Soundwave's now, which Starscream found briefly amusing. Except that she, as a flier, was much prettier than Soundwave was.

Unfortunately for Starscream, Swoop didn't look different enough that Megatron wasn't instantly aware of who, exactly, she was. And Starscream certainly knew who she was. Even though she was just an image on a vidscreen, she called to him, like a siren from out of human myth, and he found himself taking several involuntary steps toward the vidscreen – and therefore toward Megatron. He was mesmerized by just an image of her, watching as she executed a few graceful and exuberant barrel rolls. He felt as if he could simply reach into the screen and pull her to him and then blissfully devour her. He made a move to do so, even.

But then slowly, ever so slowly, _dangerously_ slowly, Megatron turned to Starscream, and Starscream froze and then turned his head to look at Megatron. The look on Megatron's face was indecipherable for a moment before it went ice cold, utterly devoid of any emotion whatsoever. It was his most dangerous not-expression, one that Starscream remembered well. He had seen it for the first time moments before Megatron had destroyed the queen, and he had, so far as he could remember, never seen it since. Until now.

"Well," Megatron drawled, his voice lethally quiet, "no wonder she still plagues you, Starscream."

Starscream had thought that he was suicidal, that he would welcome death however it chose to claim him because he'd convinced himself that death was infinitely preferable to raving, irretrievable lunacy. But he'd been wrong. There was still, somewhere within him, something that was clinging desperately to the idea of self-preservation. The instinct had always been particularly strong in Starscream, much stronger than it ought to be in a warrior, and it was what had made him easily swayed by Megatron's rhetoric, all those millennia ago, in the lead-up to the Uprising, and once he'd been swayed, all of the Seekers had been more easily won over as well. The instinct had more than a few times, both before the Uprising and after it, kept him alive and kicking when by all rights he should have been destroyed. As a side effect, it had also earned him a reputation for cowardice, but he'd come to accept that status over the years, even in some ways to embrace it. 

The self-preservation instinct was apparently still there, strong as ever in the face of the prospect of death – or worse – at Megatron's hands. Long ago, as the once-trusting relationship between the two of them had slowly frayed and tattered beyond repair, to the point that Starscream was keenly aware that Megatron now tolerated his continued existence only because his abilities were valuable and there was no one else who could fill his position, Starscream had vowed to himself that he would never give Megatron the satisfaction of destroying him, should it ever come to pass that Megatron's abhorrence of him overcame his usefulness to him. It had meant eternally walking a very fine line, annoying Megatron for his own amusement but not _too_ much. Betraying his "trust," but not _too_ much. Poking carefully at limits, stretching boundaries to within millimeters of breaking them but never actually breaking them. Starscream knew all the particulars of those limits, where it was safe to tread and where it wasn't, and when he'd decided to let _her_ live, he had been very aware that he had made a decision that irrevocably shattered those limits. He'd simply decided that the possible future benefits were worth it. 

Of course, that was before she had started driving him out of his mind.

But now, somewhat sooner than he'd expected, Megatron had discovered that Starscream had willfully overstepped a boundary that had always existed, unspoken, between them: He could push Megatron so far but no farther before he would lethally retaliate. So, the moment had finally arrived when he had outlived his usefulness to Megatron, when treachery and betrayal had finally overshadowed talent and inborn position. He'd thought that he would welcome it, that he would view this moment as nothing but a release from his burdens. No more walking fine lines. No more games. No more insanity. No more _her_. No more…anything. Just the peace of oblivion. Yet, when squarely faced with the prospect of death at Megatron's hands, Starscream found the concept still to be unbearable, abhorrent on a primal level. He discovered a strong desire to prevent Megatron, specifically, from killing him.

"Fight or flight" was a universal concept common to every living creature. Pushed to a limit, faced with destruction, one decided in a split-second which of the two possible courses of action one was going to follow. In Starscream's experience, the foolishly heroic – and the plain old foolish – always chose to fight, and often they died in their attempt to be nobly heroic. Cowards like Starscream, on the other hand, always chose to flee, but this meant that they lived to fight or flee another day, which to Starscream had always seemed infinitely preferable. So here he was, making the choice again, and he made the habitual one.

As a warrior, Starscream's body considered weapons systems more vital than practically everything else, so they still had full power at the cost of denying other systems that any non-warrior would consider far more vital than weaponry. For perhaps the first time in his life, Starscream found himself appreciating the skewed physical priorities of his caste because it meant that even in his weakened state, he could launch every weapon at his disposal at Megatron. He had no illusions of destroying Megatron, of course. He sought simply to create some buffering distance between them as well as a distraction. And then, quite literally, Starscream flew. He transformed, razed the bulkhead with a couple of missiles, and then escaped through the smoking ruins of it into the corridor outside, gracefully dodging enraged fusion cannon blasts as he went. It took skill, focus, and concentration to navigate the tight corridors of Headquarters while in flight, and skill Starscream had, in abundance. Focus and concentration rose to the occasion out of necessity, in the face of the very real possibility of his own death, so suddenly unwanted.

Starscream knew that he needed to escape, and to do that, he knew exactly where he needed to go. The docking tower was the obvious choice and was therefore not an option, but there was another way out of Decepticon Headquarters. It was one that not many would think of, but one of which Starscream, forever walking that fine line between Megatron's tolerance and a painful, humiliating death, was keenly aware. He knew all of the places to hide, all of the places that were sensor-blind. All of the ways to escape.

What had eventually become the main part of the Decepticons' underwater headquarters had once been a space-going vessel. As such, it had emergency escape pods, most of them built to sustain three individuals of Starscream's size, for Seeker trines. The pods themselves had been cannibalized for parts long ago, once it was clear that the ship would never fly again, but their launch tubes were still intact. Opening up all of the tubes at once, scattered as they were throughout various levels of Headquarters, would almost entirely flood the main part of the base very quickly, which would be a very good diversion. And once the tubes were open, Starscream had only to hop into one of them, endure a relatively short "flight" through water, and then there would be freedom. Of a sort, at least.

So instead of heading topside, where the docking bay was situated and where, no doubt, there would be a welcoming committee waiting for him, Starscream headed instead for the ship's underbelly, where there was one of the three auxiliary control rooms, from which he knew that he could open all of the escape pods' launch tubes. And just down the corridor from there was a launch tube that was his ticket out of there.

He encountered few individuals on his way, and all of those that he did encounter he incapacitated – permanently or not, he didn't know – so as not to have his position or intended destination reported too quickly. Alarms blared, Megatron's enraged voice boomed over the comm, and confusion generally reigned, but Starscream was in short order ensconced, unharassed, in the auxiliary control room that was his destination. Once there, he communed with the emergency protocols and ordered them to systematically open the escape pod launch tubes, blowing their physical hatches and simultaneously lowering the force fields that were an additional level of protection against someone doing exactly what he was doing. He left the launch tube through which he intended to escape for last.

As Starscream worked, the voices over the comm became less concerned with him and more concerned with the rising floodwaters and collateral damage, and he allowed himself a smirk, satisfied with his handiwork. His fellow Decepticons would have their hands full for quite a while, indeed, with hopefully not a thought to spare for him. And then, very shortly, once all of the comm squawkings were all about water and the disgusting things that were coming in with it, it was time to go. Pushing away from the console at which he'd been working, Starscream headed for the door and poked his head cautiously out of it, glancing up and down the corridor. No one was about, and the corridor was bathed in dim red emergency lighting in the face of the crisis at hand. Voices, some of them now panicked cries for help, still squawked over the open comm channels, but Starscream paid them no mind as he slipped into the corridor.

Since there was only one escape pod tube on this level – which was why he had chosen it – the water wasn't very deep yet, only to his ankle, so navigating was no problem. As he neared the tube, Starscream could hear the frigid water pouring in, crashing loudly as it spewed from the wide interior opening of the upwardly-canted tube and onto the deck plates and against the opposite bulkhead. The force of the incoming flood made it quite difficult to enter the tube, but Starscream managed it, transforming as he did so, the width of the tube easily accommodating his wingspan. "Flying" against the incoming tide was difficult, too, but also manageable with thrusters at maximum. Once through the tube, overcoming the currents that wanted to suck him back into Headquarters like one of the disgusting organic creatures about which his comrades had been complaining was easier still, and soon Starscream was fully away, slipping unseen and unchallenged into the abyssal darkness that shrouded Decepticon Headquarters. He headed for the surface with all possible haste. "Flying" underwater was categorically not his idea of fun, and the water pressure was dangerous in his weakened condition.

Starscream's energy levels were laughably low as he breached the surface of the Pacific, rocketing out of it and into early morning sunshine in a glittering arc of spray and noise. Most of his peripheral systems had shut down long ago, in the face of weeks of little-to-no sleep and even less energon, and now some of his diagnostics were reporting that some of his vital systems were starting to give up the ghost, too. Other systems, some of them still fully powered, hadn't been at all happy about the swim, the water pressure having done some damage despite his haste. And he had a journey of a thousand miles ahead of him, most of it over ocean. Given his condition, Starscream was dismally aware that he wasn't likely to complete the journey without meeting up with that ocean again at some point.

But he had no choice now, he grimly realized as he adjusted his course. He had saved his own hide in a somewhat spectacular fashion, and now there was nowhere else to go but his new intended destination. Starscream was certain that, assuming that it survived the unexpected flood, Decepticon Headquarters and its inhabitants would never welcome him again. Now there was only one person in the entire universe who could conceivably help him. And if she wouldn't or couldn't help him, then at least she was likely to cheerfully reduce him to a zillion tiny bits.

And if it came to that, that worked for Starscream, too. If only because she _wasn't_ Megatron.


	9. Fallen Eagle

It had been far too easy to shoot down Starscream.

Swoop had gotten pretty good at combating the Seekers over the years, but she knew that she wasn't _that_ good, certainly not when pitted one-on-one against the aerial wizard that was Starscream. Even with her new and upgraded body, he had millennia of experience on her, was easily three times as fast as she was, and could probably fly circles around her while half comatose. So really, it was obvious to Swoop that Starscream had wanted her to shoot him down, if not actually to destroy him. The last and somewhat frantic communiqué that he'd transmitted to her on a frequency meant only for her had been telling, not to mention weird and disturbing.

"Please make it stop, Swoop," he had said.

There had been un-Starscream-like quiet desperation in his voice, but Swoop had had no idea what he had meant. Make _what_ stop? And he'd said please? And before that he'd been raving like a lunatic, the only coherent thing he'd said pretty much being to beg her to come out and meet him, alone? She'd been about to ask him just what the hell he thought he was doing, but it was at that point that a large number of naturally-concerned Autobots had arrived on the scene. Once it was clear what was about to happen, Starscream had shouted a desolate, desperate, "For the love of Primus, _just do it_!" at her, screeching loudly enough that probably everyone had heard it. Humans in the next state over had probably heard it.

Starscream had bellowed this at Swoop just before firing every weapon that he possessed at her.

Starscream knew Swoop well. They'd been opponents for twenty-four years now, so he knew that, if fired upon, her instincts were to fire back, all reflexive and uncoordinated. He used the tactic against her all the time, getting her to fire in an uncontrolled way and then using the time it took her weapons system to reset to his own advantage. It was very frustrating. She was getting better at containing the wild and distracting counter-impulse now, if she wanted to or if the situation called for it, but it was still very much a work in progress. This, too, Starscream knew. 

His aim had not been true when he'd fired at her, but it was obvious to her that he hadn't been trying to damage her. Under normal circumstances, Starscream rarely missed, so it seemed to Swoop that his intention had been to force her to react, not to destroy her, not even really to injure her, and he had achieved his objective. Dodging his barrage but for a glancing, stinging laser blast that lightly singed the underside of one of her wings, she had fired her own barrage back at him. One of her air-to-air missiles had impacted him squarely at the juncture of one of his wings and his fuselage, a Seeker weak spot that she always targeted.

She'd landed much better shots on Starscream in the past, and he'd shaken them off with relative ease, faltering in flight for only a moment or two as his systems compensated for any damage that she'd managed to inflict on him. This had usually lasted only long enough to allow her to escape his clutches, however momentarily. This time, he had completely lost control, eventually spiraling in a graceless flat spin down to Earth, slamming into it with a level of force that had made Swoop wince in sincere sympathy. He'd skipped along the ground a few times after the initial impact before coming to rest in a smoking heap, and then he had been utterly still.

Losing control and crashing like that was very much out of character for Starscream, who was perhaps the most dazzling, albeit reckless, flier ever to grace their species. But now, hours later, Swoop had some idea as to why it had happened. Although Starscream's crash had looked horrible, the damage that it had inflicted on him hadn't been life-threatening. He was a tough nut to crack that way. Except for a badly twisted and crumpled wing that had taken the brunt of the initial impact and that would be much easier to replace than it would be to repair, the damage had mostly been a fairly easy fix.

It was rather ironic, repairing damage that she herself had caused, but Swoop had something of a vested interest in doing so. Starscream had put her, specifically, into a very awkward position, and she wanted -- _needed_ \-- answers as to why. And as of now, well into the evening after the bizarre encounter that had made Starscream their guest late that morning, he lacked only a few parts that Wheeljack was very unhappily fabricating for her, including the wing. She was keeping Starscream offline, and therefore harmless and not requiring extra security arrangements, in the interim.

Really, it was everything _else_ that was wrong with Starscream that had Swoop worried. None of it had been caused by her or by the crash, but it did perhaps have the potential to answer some of the questions that she had. It had already given her some possible theories as to why Starscream had come to Autobot Headquarters, alone, energy depleted, and crazed, in the first place.

Swoop was frankly amazed that Starscream had been able to make the trip at all. All of his secondary systems and some of his primary systems were shut down. All indications from the diagnostics that she'd run were that Starscream had been almost completely drained of energy well before he'd arrived in Autobot Headquarters's airspace. Worse, several of his more vital systems were in a state of near-terminal degradation, which among other things indicated that he hadn't properly slept in weeks. And then, when she'd run a few deep-level scans on him, it had revealed peculiar, precise, and systematic instances of physical damage to various but specific sensory relays as well as, more disturbingly, damage to his spark chamber itself.

Swoop was busily poking around in Starscream's wide-open chest, cataloguing all of the issues at hand so that she could speak intelligently with him about all of it when she brought him back online. She was so absorbed in her task that she didn't notice Ratchet's approach until he planted himself on the other side of Starscream's berth. Swoop looked up at him in time to see him folding his arms over his chest, glancing down with distaste at her patient, and then giving her an appraising and distinctly displeased look.

"What?" Swoop asked defensively.

"How are you doing?" Ratchet asked gruffly in return. His gaze flicked toward the superficial laser burn on her wing, which her self-repair nanites had well under control. It didn't even sting anymore, and it would be gone as if it had never been in a day or two, once the nanites had finished their task. So Swoop knew that wasn't really what Ratchet was asking about.

"Me?" she responded. "I'm fine." She lightly tapped the center of her chest a few times and added, "It's feeling more than a little crowded in here now, but I imagine that's normal."

"I suppose so," Ratchet said dispassionately, watching with another moue of distaste as she went back to poking at Starscream. "But what I _meant_ was, you've been a bit...tetchy today."

She frowned as she worked and echoed, "Tetchy?"

"You pissed off Wheeljack," Ratchet answered bluntly. "That's not easy to do."

Swoop faltered, froze. Because there was a rare undertone in Ratchet's voice, one that said that she'd pissed _him_ off, too, that he wasn't just in his usual state of habitual grumpiness. She straightened then but she wouldn't meet Ratchet's gaze. She stared at the floor, instead.

"I didn't mean to," she said to the floor in a small, chastened voice. "It just...came out."

Wheeljack hadn't wanted to fabricate the parts that she needed for Starscream, and she'd been...sharp with him. Much to her horror, she had _ordered_ him to do what she wanted. She regretted it now, wished that she'd taken more time to explain to him why she was so insistent, why she so badly needed answers that only Starscream could provide. But she hadn't done that, hadn't taken that time. Instead, the words -- the _order_ \-- and the imperious tone and the attitude and _all_ of it had just...flown out of her, without her conscious consent or control. And he had snapped to obey her. 

Wheeljack. Snapped to obey. Her. 

And he hadn't been happy about it. The look that he'd given her, angry and almost _betrayed_ , before he'd spun away from her and stormed out of the medbay had been...She'd buried herself in her task of trying to figure out what the hell was up with Starscream in order to forget about that look that Wheeljack had given her, but now here Ratchet was, bringing it up again after strategically giving her some time to settle down. He'd seen what had happened, after all. Many people had, much to her mortification.

"I hope that's true," Ratchet was saying to her quietly now. His tone was almost disappointed, though, and it made Swoop wince.

"It _is_ true," she insisted, stricken. "I would never..." Except that she had. _She had_ , and there was no denying it. "I didn't _mean to_ ," she repeated, more vehemently this time, except that her voice shook. 

At that, Ratchet sighed and his posture softened a little.

"I do know this is hard for you, Swoop," he said to her after a long moment. "Much harder than it would have been had you...had you grown up as you should have, if you'd known what to expect. You've been thrown into this, and you're so young, and it...I know it's hard."

"It is," she agreed miserably. "There's...it's _there_ , the power. And I see how people look at me sometimes, like they're waiting for me to... But I don't _want_ to use it, Ratchet. I can't...I don't want to be like..."

Ratchet sighed again as her voice trailed off, knowing what she'd been about to say.

"You won't be," he assured her quietly. "You _aren't_ her. You aren't like her."

"How do you _know_ that?" Swoop responded despairingly. And then the question that she'd been asking of herself for weeks now ripped itself out of her almost of its own volition. " _I_ don't know who I am anymore," she said, "so how can _anyone_ else?"

The despair in Swoop's voice broke Ratchet, and he went around to the other side of the berth that had been separating them. He laid a hand on each of her shoulders, squeezing gently, and Swoop looked up at him almost reflexively.

"I know who you are," Ratchet assured her quietly but very seriously once she was looking at him. "She might have bred you, but in all the ways that matter, you are _my_ daughter, not hers. _I_ raised you, Wheeljack raised you, _we_ taught you and shaped you, and _I know_ exactly who you are. And I love you, and I am _so_ proud of you."

A little whimper escaped Swoop then and suddenly Ratchet found himself with an armful of shuddering and entirely-too-young queen, practically melted against him. This touchy-feely physical comfort thing was usually much more Wheeljack's department than his own, and he might wish that this scene wasn't happening in the middle of the medbay, but it couldn't be helped. He tightened his arms around Swoop and murmured soothingly, "It's OK, Winglet. It's OK."

"Wheeljack hates me," she murmured despairingly after a long moment and, despite himself, Ratchet smiled affectionately.

"No, he doesn't," he assured her. "Wheeljack loves you and your brothers more than life itself, which is probably _why_ he's a bit pissed off at you right now. But for the love of Primus, don't be like Grimlock, assuming that someone instantly hates you just because you've had a disagreement."

Swoop made a small noise, something that was probably trying to be a chuckle, and she said in a shaky voice, "Slag would tell me to stop being so stupid."

"And he'd be absolutely right," Ratchet replied. And then he leaned down to murmur against the top of her head, "But don't tell him I said that." She did chuckle then and Ratchet advised, "Just give Wheeljack some time to cool off and then talk to him. That's what I do when I've pissed him off, and since we've known each other all our lives, I've pissed him off plenty of times. He still doesn't hate me, and he doesn't love me _nearly_ as much as he loves you. So it'll be OK, I promise."

Swoop sighed at that and managed to snuggle in closer for a long moment before pushing gently away from Ratchet, taking a deep breath and visibly collecting herself.

"OK," she said with a bit of determination in her voice. "OK, I can do that." The she straightened her shoulders and repeated with firmer determination, "I can do that."

"Good," Ratchet said with a satisfied nod. "So, are we all done with the mushy stuff now?"

Swoop gave him a smile and teased, "Now you sound just like Slag. I always suspected that he got his attitude from _you_."

Ratchet pointed a finger at her and said, "Hey, there's no need to be insulting."

And Swoop giggled at that, which made Ratchet feel better. Which was good, because there was something else that they needed to discuss. He put if off for a few long moments, though, watching her go back to working on Starscream, watching her steady and confident movements. He'd taught her that, and he hadn't lied to her. He _was_ proud of her, on so many levels. She was, in many ways, the best thing that had ever happened to him. And he was loath to upset her again, but there was something that he needed to say. More than that, there was something that he needed to know.

"You shouldn't have gone out there today, you know," he said to Swoop eventually, quietly. She paused in her work and stood to face him again, her expression suddenly guarded. He pointed at her chest and added, "Those will be ready to come out soon, and you put them -- _and yourself_ \-- in danger. That's...You can't _do_ that, Swoop. Not anymore. You're too important."

"I had to do it," Swoop answered simply.

"You _had_ to?" Ratchet echoed incredulously. "Swoop, you—"

"He _asked_ me to," she interrupted quietly in order to avert Ratchet's impending rant, gesturing down at Starscream.

Ratchet looked at her askance. That right there was part of what he needed to know.

"He asked you to?" he echoed, bewildered. "What, with smoke signals?"

"Private frequency," Swoop answered, giving Ratchet an unamused look. "I don't know how he got it but…He asked for me, and I decided to go. Figured I owed him that much."

Ratchet's expression shifted in an instant to one of disbelief, even though what she was saying was another piece of what he needed to know.

"You don't owe him _anything_!" he asserted. "And in case it's slipped your mind or something, may I remind you that he tried to kill you?"

Swoop snorted and then waved a dismissive hand at him.

"If he'd wanted me dead, Ratchet, I wouldn't be standing here. You know that. And _I_ think," she added, tapping her chest significantly again, "that I _do_ owe him."

She was trying her best to remain calm. She'd learned the hard way that, at this very late stage of the game, if she allowed herself to become upset or to experience any sort of stronger emotion, then the developing sparks within her tended to reflect her agitation, and as a result of their agitation, her insides became very painfully overcrowded very quickly, which made _her_ more agitated, and...it was a very bad feedback loop, something that she did her best to avoid now, if possible. It wasn't so much for her own comfort, but more because she was concerned that the new ones might be damaged. And since she'd already upset them enough by going out to meet Starscream and then being fired upon, and _then_ the whole thing with Wheeljack, Swoop felt it wise not to upset them again today.

"He had no choice about _that_ ," Ratchet was saying scathingly, meanwhile. He was scowling fiercely at Swoop in disbelief.

"He had no choice about _coming_ , yes," Swoop agreed evenly, still holding on to calm, going back to scanning and poking at Starscream's innards as a distraction while she spoke. "And he had no choice about…about…well, you know. But he had many possible choices otherwise. If nothing else, he could have made the experience horrible for me, but he didn't. At all. He was…good to me. _Very_ good, actually," she finished with a fondly reminiscent chuckle.

Ratchet went very still at that, and Swoop looked up at him in amusement, taking in his stunned expression as he realized the implications of her words.

"And if I know Megatron," Swoop added as Ratchet just continued to blink dumbfoundedly at her, "he was under orders to kill me or capture me or to do _something_ awful to me, and he chose not to do that, either, for whatever reason. I'm sure his reasons were completely selfish, but I still owe him. We _all_ owe him. Unless," she finished, "you have more queens hiding out in stasis somewhere?"

That set Ratchet back on his heels for a moment. He scowled at Swoop, but he kept his mouth shut, and it was a very rare occasion when he didn't have a clever retort ready at hand in an argument. But it couldn't be denied that, when it came to Swoop, Starscream _had_ done the right thing, whatever his reasons had been, and pointing this out to Ratchet very effectively shut him up. 

"In any case," she added with a sigh when Ratchet didn't say anything but also didn't stomp away in exasperation, her voice and her entire demeanor softening with sudden uncertainty, "I'm pretty sure that his goal was to try to convince me to shoot _him_ down." Lowering her voice further, she added, "Ratchet, I'm ninety-eight percent certain that he had no intention of harming me and simply wanted to be captured. I think he asked for me alone so that he wouldn't have to deal with the rest of us trying _en masse_ to kill him."

"What makes you think all that?" Ratchet asked, narrowing his eyes at her, but this time thoughtfully.

"The last thing he said to me before the stuff at the very end," Swoop explained, "was 'Please make it stop.'"

"Make _what_ stop?" Ratchet asked, scowling again, but this time more in puzzlement than in anger.

"My question exactly!" Swoop responded. "It'll be the first of many things that I ask him when I wake him up. But I didn't answer him at the time because I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. And then suddenly everyone _else_ started showing up, and _that_ was when he fired at me. And it was desperate. You were there by then. I'm sure you heard what he said just before he fired at me."

"Mmmm," Ratchet grumbled unhappily.

"And then," Swoop added, gesturing at the _pièce de résistance_ , the minute damage she'd found, "there's all of this."

Frowning, Ratchet bent down to have a closer look at the damage that Swoop had indicated.

"What in the seven _hells_ …?" he murmured fervently, squinting as he visually traced the progression of the damage, just as Swoop had done when she had first discovered it.

"I'm pretty sure it's all self-inflicted," she said quietly as Ratchet poked around at Starscream's innards for a bit and then ran a few scans of his own to confirm her findings.

"I would tend to agree," he said absently a minute later, frowning thoughtfully at the results that his scanner was spitting at him. "It's too precise and too isolated to be anything else. But…why?" Ratchet wondered. "This would hurt. A lot. Ow," he added, wincing hard as he took in the damage on Starscream's spark chamber. "Hell, _that_ probably should have killed him."

The damage to which Ratchet was referring was indicative of Starscream's spark absorbing spikes of energy, some of them quite powerful, that it had no business absorbing and that, by all rights, should indeed have killed him because his spark was not meant to do such a thing. Somehow, he hadn't been killed. Nevertheless, the pain would have been excruciating, and Swoop knew exactly what it felt like. In fact, she wondered if Starscream had been dubiously inspired by her. But whatever the case, he must have been quite desperate to resort to such a thing.

"I know it would hurt a lot," Swoop answered Ratchet softly. " _Believe_ me, I know."

"I suppose you do," Ratchet replied, giving her a half-smile that made her think that she was forgiven for her rash actions earlier in the day. "But....Why in the universe would he do this to himself?"

Swoop sighed. 

"While I've been working on him, I've been doing a little bit of research," she said quietly as Ratchet poked cautiously at Starscream's spark chamber, "about self-harm." At Ratchet's uncomprehending look, she explained, "There's nothing in _our_ databases about such a thing, but the humans… They're quite creative about hurting themselves."

Ratchet snorted disgustedly at that.

"Why am I not surprised?" he muttered, then added something under his breath that Swoop couldn't quite hear but that definitely involved the words "organics" and "fruitcakes."

She chuckled and then said, more seriously, "Sometimes, they do it to distract themselves from something else that's bothering them, something that they see as much worse than the pain that they inflict on themselves."

"And you're thinking that's the case here?" Ratchet answered, looking up at her skeptically, narrow-eyed.

"Maybe," Swoop answered with an uncertain shrug. "His self-repair systems aren't functioning right now because he's in such terrible overall shape, so I'm not entirely certain, but... It looks to me like none of the damage is older than…than when he was with me," she added pointedly.

Ratchet froze, immediately realizing the implication of her words. "Swoop…" he said warningly, drawing out her name into a much longer word, but she spoke over him.

"It looks like he started back here," Swoop said, ignoring Ratchet, setting about demonstratively tracing the damage back to a secondary sensor node nestled in the middle of Starscream's forearm, "and then when that wasn't enough, he—"

"--Moved on to something more sensitive, from secondaries to primaries here," Ratchet said flatly, finishing Swoop's thought and indicating a sensory nexus that was normally nestled in the depths of Starscream's shoulder but that Swoop had carefully teased out from the surrounding circuitry and wiring that normally concealed it so that she could more closely examine the damage to it. "And then eventually," Ratchet concluded, tracing down to the middle of Starscream's chest, "to his damned spark chamber."

"And then when _that_ wasn't enough," Swoop tentatively theorized, "maybe… Maybe he figured that I – that we – were the only ones who could help him."

"Swoop…" That cautioning tone was back.

"I did imprint on him, Ratchet," she pointed out quietly.

" _That_ ," he answered, frowning at the change of subject but quickly figuring out what she might be getting at, "shouldn't be having any effect on him now. Normally—"

"Ah, but as you're so fond of reminding me, I'm not normal," Swoop pointed out. "I _especially_ wasn't normal when I imprinted on him and when I was…with him."

Ratchet frowned severely at her.

"Unless there's something _really_ important that you're not telling me here, Winglet, what you two did was a direct _one-way_ infusion from him to you. Not the other way around. None of your issues should have backwashed into him. It's not like it was a mutual sharing kind of thing, like a merge."

"The key words there, Ratchet," Swoop pointed out, "are 'should have.' Can you be sure about that?"

"Well, no," Ratchet hedged. "You _are_ rather unique, but—"

"He said," she added determinedly, speaking over Ratchet, "'Make it stop.' The only thing that I can think of that from his point of view I might be able to 'stop' is the imprint. If it never went away, then it must have been – must _still_ be – driving him crazy, and maybe pain was the only thing that stopped the craziness for a while. Or maybe it was just a welcome distraction. But whatever the case, when it didn't work anymore…Well, here he is."

Ratchet stared at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he gave her a more penetrating look.

"That's complete speculation," he said sternly. "And it's far-fetched to boot."

"I know," Swoop answered evenly. "But it does explain some things."

"It does, yes," Ratchet agreed distractedly, staring thoughtfully down at Starscream for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. When he looked back up at Swoop, he was more focused as he added, "There is one thing we can check that would support your theory." When she just looked back at him questioningly, he explained, "Part of the purpose of the imprint was to align his basal energy signature with yours so that your spark could safely accept energy input from his. It's a bit like a bond that way, but temporary. Point is, it would have altered his energy signature, but not yours, and his should have reverted to his normal when the imprint wore off. If his is still matched to yours…"

"Then I'm right, and the imprint never dissolved," Swoop finished triumphantly. "So, we need to run a comparison."

"Yes, Wingnut," Ratchet said affectionately. "We do. But I'm not about to go poking around at your spark at the moment. Bad enough that I transplanted you." She chuckled as Ratchet continued, "Plus, all the Juniors dancing around in there now would likely throw off any readings, anyway. So it'll have to wait until you've delivered."

Swoop nodded understandingly and asked, "Should we keep him offline until then?"

Ratchet sighed, shaking his head as he stared down at Starscream's inert form, frowning particularly at his dim and weakly-pulsing red spark, a bit of worry furrowing his brow despite the identity of the object of his worry.

"I'm not sure that's the best idea, either. You're at what? Thirty days or so now?"

"Thirty-three," she confirmed.

Ratchet nodded.

"So you've got four or five days to go, if things go normally." He shook his head doubtfully and added," I don't think it's a good idea to keep him offline that long, especially not if the idiot's managed to damage his own spark with his shenanigans." He paced around Starscream's berth, frowning thoughtfully down at him. "We'll bring him around tomorrow afternoon," he decided. "Wheeljack should have his important bits done by tomorrow morning even if he's procrastinating about it, and he should be close to halfway re-energized by then, too. And," he finished with a resigned sigh, "it'll give me time to calm Optimus down about the whole business."

"Don't forget Red Alert," Swoop put in lightly. "I'm sure he'll want _very special_ security arrangements in place well in advance."

"Mmmm," Ratchet grumbled. He was never happy about having to deal with extra security in his domain.

"The CMO's work is never done," Swoop said, quirking a teasing grin at him.

"Watch it, you," Ratchet responded grumpily. "Or I'll retire and give _you_ the job."

"Can't," she teased again, grinning delightedly. "'Aid's got seniority."

Ratchet responded with a snort and a wordless grumble. Then he gave her a critical, narrowed-eyed look and said, "You look tired. You've been at this most of the day now, so…Get out of here." When Swoop opened her mouth to protest, Ratchet spoke over her, saying, "No, no, that's an order, Swoop. I won't have you endangering the Juniors any more than you already have today. Go. Energon. Rest. In that order."

Swoop sighed exasperatedly at that, but knew that she had no choice but to obey. Not only did Ratchet have his "CMO Voice" on, but he also had his "Dad Voice" on. Whenever that happened, there was no protest in the universe, no matter how logical, that she could offer that he would listen to. She was glad that, very soon, he and everyone else would have a dozen or so fewer reasons to mother-hen her.

"I promise I'll keep a _very_ close eye on this one for you," Ratchet was quietly assuring her meanwhile, inclining his head down at Starscream.

Swoop snorted at that.

"Oh, I'm sure you will," she answered.

And with that, she headed toward the medbay doors. Ratchet was right. She was tired, but she was also keyed up from Starscream's unexpected arrival. She wasn't yet ready to settle down for the night. Plus, she had some unfinished business with the historical databases, and now was, suddenly, the perfect time to finish it.


	10. Ties That Bind

"She's not a parent of which to be proud, is she?"

Swoop's back had been to the doors of the archives, and she hadn't heard them open, hadn't heard Mirage come in and move to stand just a few paces behind her. His sorrow-tinged voice from unexpectedly close-by made her jump embarrassingly, startling not only Swoop but also the infant sparks within her, and they jolted about uncomfortably. Fighting to suppress a yelp, Swoop laid one hand on her chest and began to gently tap out a repetitive rhythm against it with her fingertips. She'd only recently discovered that doing so would calm the new lives inside of her, although it took a few long moments to have an effect. She used those moments to gather her thoughts before she turned to face Mirage.

She'd been completely engrossed in reading about her…family. Even in her thoughts, she stumbled over the word. The concept still wasn't real to her. In the couple of weeks that had passed since she'd found herself in a new body and with an entirely new life history, Swoop had been avoiding reflecting on everything. Or on anything, for that matter. She'd been burying herself in work, even if it was just busywork, to avoid doing so. For a while, she had been convinced that she was merely dreaming, but it was clear to her now that this was no dream. Or nightmare, as the case may be. This, all of this, was her reality now, no matter how much she tried to go on with her life as if nothing had changed. 

Because everything had changed. _Everything_. Not just for her, but for everyone. 

With that realization, disturbing thoughts had begun to trickle into her mind at odd times, the tendency strangely worsening with Starscream's arrival, as if his sudden and unexpected appearance was a message that she needed to start assimilating everything. And then, there'd been the confrontation with Wheeljack and the subsequent discussion with Ratchet. More messages. And, once summarily dismissed from the medbay, she found herself with time to ponder and no handy excuses not to do so. She had time to do some of the research that she'd been avoiding. She had time to allow some facts that she'd been doing her best to ignore to sink in fully instead.

She had time to try to understand who she was.

The family that she had mostly never known, that she'd literally been born into rather than the more figurative bond between the only family that she truly knew, was a part of who she was. That family was a mostly decimated now, but it wasn't completely gone. She had a traitorous uncle in the Decepticon ranks, apparently, which was fabulous news. She also had a brother, who was now standing in the very same room with her, just behind her. He was a brother who had always been thoughtlessly unkind to her, dismissive at best, denigrating at worst. That history made things much more difficult between them now.

And beyond that, on a wider scale, having spent several hours sipping highest-quality energon – a perk of her condition – and consulting historical databases, it dawned on Swoop as it hadn't really dawned on her yet that she was part of a dynasty that had existed, uninterrupted, for eons. If she wanted to, she could trace her direct ancestry back hundreds of thousands of years and even farther, until recorded history faded into the mists. Now, as Swoop stroked a hand absently over her chest, she realized that it was her duty not only to produce new sparks but to continue the dynasty itself. As overwhelming as the thought was, it further occurred to her that it would be very wise to start doing so as soon as possible, which was beyond overwhelming. But, entrenched in an on-going war as she was, there was no guarantee that she would be alive in a week or even that she would see the sunrise tomorrow. And if she were to die with no successor, then her species would be right back where it had been before it was known what she was: Doomed to eventual and certain extinction. And because of that, it would likely also be doomed to perpetuating a stupid, pointless, _hopeless_ war until _everyone_ was dead because why not go out with a bang rather than a whimper? 

She could stop that from happening now, maybe, because her existence meant that they weren't doomed. Her existence meant that things weren't so bleak and hopeless as had been thought, and maybe that would translate into more of a sense of urgency about ending the war. But even if she couldn't overcome the inertia of war, whether or not her entire species continued to exist into the future, after her own death, was completely on her own shoulders now, and it was a weight that was crushing her, so overwhelming on so many levels that she didn't want to think about it at all, didn't even know where to begin. In fact, her entire existence was overwhelming. The only family she'd thought she had were Wheeljack, Ratchet, and the other Dinobots, with all of whom she was extremely close. And she'd thought that the only important thing that she'd ever do in her life would be to heal those who needed healing, to save lives even if they only turned around and went off to try to get themselves killed in a stupid, pointless war again.

How wrong she had been, on all fronts, about _everything_.

Swoop sighed heavily and turned her chair to face Mirage then. He was still standing a few paces behind her, his posture thoughtlessly perfect and his hands clasped loosely behind his back. As usual, his spotless blue and white armor gleamed in the archives' pale lighting. Even when he was covered with dirt and grime and sometimes even worse things, Mirage always managed to gleam, to look utterly dignified. It was an intimidating ability, to say the least. He was intimidating in general, or at least he had always been so to Swoop. He still was. But now his expression was troubled and uncharacteristically uncertain.

Swoop didn't know how long Mirage had been standing there, but he had to have known what she was doing here. If nothing else, he could see what she had been looking at, and now he was giving her a look that she couldn't quite interpret, since she didn't know him very well, but that might have been approving. Maybe. He'd never looked at her in approval before, so she wasn't at all sure what approval from him looked like.

Mirage had been avoiding Swoop as much as she'd been avoiding him in the couple of weeks since she'd gotten the new body that she was wearing, since he had been, so Wheeljack had told her, instrumental in saving her life. Which was something that she hadn't yet thanked him for, now that she thought about it. She supposed that lack was excusable since he was avoiding her as much as she was avoiding him. Neither of them seemed to know quite what to make of the other now, which was fueling the mutual avoidance, but Swoop was very aware that it would be wise to establish a détente between them sooner rather than later. Because, if nothing else, he had information that she needed. She needed to find some common ground between them upon which to build, and she was keenly aware that, for the moment, the _only_ common ground that they had was…her. Their mother.

And when it came to her…Well, what Mirage had said was true. Swoop had heard vague stories and whisperings about her here and there over the course of her life so far. She had never paid much attention to the stories because she'd always thought that for her, "born" long after her death, the assassinated queen was irrelevant, just a bit of interesting but ultimately meaningless trivia. She knew the basics, knew that she'd been a bad queen who'd gotten her comeuppance and that that comeuppance had had devastating fallout, but other than that she belonged to an era that had been brought to an abrupt end long before Swoop had existed.

As it turned out, though, the assassinated queen was not irrelevant to Swoop. Not at all. It was another way in which Swoop was completely wrong. 

She'd learned only just this evening that she who had birthed her had indeed done reprehensible things, things that Swoop had heard whisperings of but that she'd never really assimilated because she'd never felt a need to do so. She'd learned that her mother wasn't a parent of which to be proud, indeed. She had been of a relentlessly imperialistic bent, and the majority of the ruling council had either been of the same mindset or was merely cowed into having the same mindset. Her tendencies had been much to the misfortune of surrounding systems, which suffered under her. Cybertron's so-called "Golden Age" had come and had been maintained at a massive price, its resource demands becoming ever more enormous during the millennia of her mother's mature life. An ever-widening sphere of neighboring planets and systems, inhabited and otherwise, found themselves feeding the demand whether they wanted to or not, much to their own devastation. Some of them had ended up drained of resources to the point that they were no longer habitable. At least five had been reduced to rubble, becoming lonely and forbidding asteroid belts eternally circling their stars. Even the Decepticons hadn't done that much damage. But she had, and she would have done more...had the Uprising not happened.

Because of course her mother had been positively horrid to the warriors. She threw away their lives needlessly, sometimes for mere entertainment spectacles, and she shamelessly used their inborn reverence of her to compel them to obey her whims -- of _all_ sorts -- even when those whims had nothing to do with their function. This was what Swoop had heard the most mutterings about, overhearing some of the things that the few warriors amongst the Autobots had said here and there. And it was this that Swoop most feared in herself, now, because she was beginning to see the power over others that she had lurking within her, and she'd already used it to get what she wanted, which frightened her to her core. She did not wish to travel the road that her mother had traveled.

Because "tyrant" was a good word to describe her mother. She put Megatron to shame. She had certainly brought about her own spectacularly bloody downfall, to the point that certain chronicles painted Megatron, the instrument of that downfall, as a savior. Of course, these were chronicles that had been recorded well before Megatron had started to become much like the queen whom he had deposed, but the facts remained. Although Swoop had never known her mother, had no memory whatsoever of her or of anything at all about her very brief "previous life," she was discovering that it was still a staggering blow to know that one of the individuals responsible for her existence had been so rightfully hated. At least Mirage carried the same burden, and that shared burden was, Swoop suddenly realized, the logical place to lay the first few planks of a bridge between her and her brother.

"I apologize for startling you," Mirage was quietly saying, meanwhile. "I thought that you had heard me come in but that you were ignoring me," he explained. At the quizzical look Swoop gave him, he hastily added, "Not that you don't have legitimate reasons for wanting to ignore me, of course. I have been less than kind to you."

"You didn't know," Swoop answered quietly after a moment spent staring at him. "You couldn't have known."

"No, that's not a valid excuse," Mirage insisted firmly. "If I've learned anything from all of this, it's that I should never again assume anything about anyone. I'm sorry for the way that I've behaved toward you, and I beg your forgiveness."

Swoop was very good at reading body language. It was an important part of being a medic, and Ratchet had told long ago her that she was naturally better at it than most of the medics he'd ever known, that she had the rare ability to be able to tell when even a warrior like Prowl was lying through his teeth about being in pain. So she could tell from Mirage's posture and from the expression on his face that he was sincere, and she frowned at him thoughtfully. She'd never dreamt that she'd see the day when haughty Mirage would humbly beg for anything, least of all from the likes of her. A gloating and less-than-kind part of herself informed Swoop that she should be savoring the schadenfreude, and that she should be making her enjoyment of the moment very clear to Mirage. But that part of her was petty and childish, and Swoop ruthlessly pushed it aside.

"I'll forgive you," she said levelly to Mirage after she'd spent a few long moments staring at him, during which he'd actually started to fidget. "On one condition," she added.

Mirage gazed at her seriously, golden eyes wide and glowing in the dim lighting.

"Anything at all," he said sincerely.

At that, Swoop inclined her head slightly backward, toward the small screen sitting on the desk that was now behind her since she'd turned to face Mirage. An image of their mother was frozen on the screen. "Tell me something about her," Swoop requested. "Something that isn't horrible, I mean. I know that there had to be _some_ good in her somewhere that the chroniclers just…forgot."

At that, Mirage smiled a sad little half-smile, and he pulled over the chair from the desk next to the one that Swoop was using, so that he could sit down with her.

"Chroniclers are brutal," he agreed quietly as he settled himself, his sitting posture as thoughtlessly perfect as his standing posture had been. He stared at the image frozen on the screen on the screen for a moment and then added with a sigh, "Particularly so when they've been…encouraged by Megatron."

"Mmmm," Swoop murmured. "I imagine so."

Mirage sat back in his chair then for a few moments, obviously gathering his thoughts.

"I tend to avoid thinking about her," he finally admitted, studiously not looking at Swoop, " I avoid thinking about anything having to do with…that time. To think about any of it is painful."

Swoop could understand that. Mirage's life had been destroyed overnight and his – their – mother had been a large part of that life that was suddenly gone as if it had never been. Remembering her, thinking about her, telling Swoop about her meant remembering that the destruction had happened, as well. It meant facing reality. It meant accepting the fact that he would likely never again be what he once had been, that even though Swoop was mature and fulfilling her function, their society was still in tatters, likely never to recover or at least never to return to exactly what it had been. That the so-called "Golden Age" was well and truly gone, in all probability never to return, was what Mirage really didn't want to face, much less to accept.

"But," Mirage was softly continuing meanwhile, "you're right that you of all people should know about her. Maybe more people should know about her, actually, beyond the…the…"

"Horrible," Swoop supplied softly as his voice trailed off.

"Yes, that," he answered, equally softly, with a soft and unhappy smile. He was quiet again for a long moment after that, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Then, sighing, he turned his head to look at Swoop, his gaze locking with hers. "There were twenty-two of us when it…when she died. I was the eldest, and you, obviously, were the youngest. Your name was—"

"Eclipse," Swoop said. "I know. I saw images of me," she added, gesturing vaguely at the screen.

Mirage quirked a small, sad smile at her.

"That must have been weird," he commented.

"Maybe not as weird as you'd think," she answered with a half-shrug and a sad half-smile. "At least, not right now, when _none_ of this seems real and _all_ of it seems weird. I mean, I look at her, and I look at you and…and…"

"I know," Mirage assured her quietly, nodding sympathetically as her voice trailed off helplessly. "I feel the same way about you."

"At least you have something to work from, " Swoop answered with a snort that bordered on bitter. "Memories, even though you might not want to visit them. Knowledge of exactly who and what you are because you've never been _someone else_ for your entire life as you've known it. I have none of that, Mirage. I have _nothing_ , now." She paused then, having said more than she had intended and feeling a tide of unproductive angry despair welling within her, the same tide that had existed for weeks now, that she'd let seep out of her with Ratchet, too. She pushed it back with savage determination, and finished in a more level tone, "I can't be the same person that I have been, and I have no idea how to be this Eclipse person."

Mirage was silent for a long moment after that, staring at Swoop contemplatively and with startling sympathy. He eventually answered, his voice low, "Then be a new person, Swoop." She just stared at him, blinking, so he continued, "You're right that you can't be who you were just a few weeks ago. You aren't just Swoop the Dinobot, the medic, anymore. You are _infinitely_ more important than those things now, and you have responsibilities."

"I know that," she answered miserably.

"But," Mirage added, "you are also in a unique and precious position, Swoop."

Swoop blinked at him, surprised, and her expression turned quizzical.

"You are unburdened by the past," Mirage said, answering the look that Swoop aimed at him, "and for those of our kind who are still alive, that is...a gift. A vanishingly _rare_ gift, one that you should cherish. You did not grow up in the world that I grew up in, and since that world is gone and will likely never return, that is probably a good thing. It means that you can more easily adapt to whatever our world will be now, going forward. Your thinking and your decisions can be more flexible, completely unbound by expectations and tradition. You can more easily look to the future, and you have the power to bring about change, change for the better. You can forge a better world. For _all_ of us."

Swoop gaped at Mirage for a long while after that, words not coming to her.

"I have no idea how to do any of that," she said quietly but bluntly, once she could speak at all.

Mirage shrugged slightly as he gave her an appraising look.

"You are a medic," he said. "You've been trained to look at an injured person and to notice what needs to be fixed, to prioritize the injuries, and then to fix them in order of decreasing severity. So, think of our society as a severely-injured person who needs to be fixed, and then think about how you can go about fixing it."

Swoop frowned doubtfully. "It's not the same thing at all," she pointed out.

"No, it isn't," Mirage allowed, "but it's a place to start, perhaps. A base to work from that you can relate to, a way to look at things that you can adapt to suit your needs. You have always adapted and learned astonishingly quickly, so I have no doubt that you can do it," he said with far more confidence than she felt. Still, Swoop smiled, surprised that he'd noticed, as Mirage finished, "You simply have to want to do the work."

"I do," Swoop said unthinkingly. "At least, I think I do," she added with less certainty.

"Go with your first impulse," Mirage advised with a small smile. "It's usually the correct one. And that being the case, you have many resources available to you in whatever you choose to do. You have four extremely powerful Dinobot brothers who will protect you with their lives, if necessary with their dying breaths, just as they have always done. You are surrounded by wise people who will help you and guide you, if you but let them do so. Optimus Prime _alone_ has access to more information than all of us combined as well as experience in pulling together and motivating disparate people from disparate backgrounds into a single cohesive unit that can achieve its goals even though many of us aren't _remotely_ doing the things that we were born to do. He will help you."

Swoop snorted at that. "If he'll even talk to me. If he'll ever _trust_ me."

"He isn't stupid, so he will," Mirage said confidently. "Eventually, anyway," he added with a bit of a grimace, and Swoop snorted again. "No, he _will_ put aside any prejudice he might still have, and he will do what needs to be done. He can't not do that because it's part of who and what he is. Others in the civil caste will follow his lead, as they always have. So, all you have to do is…Listen to them. All of them."

"Are you one of those 'wise people' you mentioned, then?" she teased gently.

Mirage shrugged again, but this time he was smiling.

"Oh, absolutely," he asserted. Then he chuckled quietly, and she chuckled back, feeling more relaxed with him than she ever had.

A stretch of silence fell between them after that, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence at all. Swoop could tell that Mirage was thinking as he stared at the far wall, and she felt no need to interrupt his contemplations, content just to sit with him and do some contemplating of her own, thinking about what he'd said. Eventually Mirage spoke up, breaking the silence.

"It's funny," he quietly murmured.

"What is?" Swoop asked.

Mirage sighed, turning to look at her again.

"Almost from the moment that you were conceived, Mother insisted that you would be her successor. She said that she knew that you would follow her. It made our sisters more than a little upset, and there was much drama about it, sometimes. The Earth term is 'cat-fighting,' I believe."

He chuckled fondly, and Swoop smiled wistfully at what was apparently for him a happy memory, for all that she didn't share it.

"She also insisted," Mirage continued, "that you would be a flier, despite the fact that _none_ of the rest of us were." He paused, giving Swoop a speculative look. "It turns out," he concluded, "that she was right. On both counts."

"Maybe she was psychic," Swoop said sadly.

"If she was," Mirage responded bitterly, "she must have had a huge blind spot in her abilities because she completely missed what was looming on the horizon."

"Maybe she just didn't want to see it," Swoop answered quietly.

Mirage sighed. It was a long sigh, mournful.

"I think," he said, "that it was more a case of thinking herself invulnerable. She thought that she had the warriors completely under her thumb, and she couldn't imagine them…turning on her like they did. None of us could."

"Like dogs," Swoop whispered.

"What?" Mirage asked, regarding her in confusion, blinking at her.

"Some humans teach dogs to be vicious," she explained. "They train them to want to fight by abusing them. But they've been known to snap and turn on their trainers. And sometimes the trainers die as a result."

Mirage nodded thoughtfully.

"You might have something there," he whispered. He was quiet again for a long time after that. And then, rather unexpectedly, he leaned toward Swoop, his expression suddenly intense and his tone of voice quietly urgent as he said, "You wanted to know something not horrible about our mother, so here you go. Whatever you read about her and no matter what anyone tells you about her, no matter how horrible it is… _Never_ doubt that our mother loved you. And never doubt that, had it been within her power to do so, she would have protected you. _Especially_ you."

Swoop stared at him, not knowing quite what to say.

And then Mirage unexpectedly added, "And never doubt that, now, if it's within _my_ power to do so, I will protect you. I won't...I won't fail you again."

"Again?" she questioned, confused. "Mirage, you've never failed me. You've practically never known that I existed."

"Oh, but I did fail you, Swoop," he answered. "Do you know why I was halfway around Cybertron when the Uprising happened?"

Swoop blinked at him, taken aback by what seemed to be an abrupt change of subject.

"No," she answered simply.

"It's so very cliché, but…Mother and I had an argument. What it was about isn't important anymore. It was trivial, but we had a special talent for turning trivial disagreements into gigantic arguments, she and I." He grimaced as he continued, "So…I left. Stormed out. Went hunting, actually, with some inappropriate but very close friends of mine. I was having a grand time, completely oblivious, while the rest of you were… hunted. And then slaughtered. If I had been there—"

"You would have been one more lamb for the slaughter," Swoop assured him quietly, sympathetically. "That's all."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Sometimes…" Mirage almost whispered, his body slumping in a way that she had never seen him do, even when he'd been injured, resting his elbows on his knees, his head bowed as if in shame. "I often thought that death would have been preferable," he said resolutely to the floor. "When I came back, saw what was left...saw the bodies, made arrangements for them… And then there was all this time, alone, when I'd never been alone before. Yes, death would have been preferable."

"Death is _never_ preferable, Mirage," Swoop quietly insisted, and before she fully realized what she was doing, she found herself reaching out to him to comfortingly stroke the back of his head. She couldn't help it. She'd always been tactile, seeking to comfort and to be comforted with touch. In response, Mirage shuddered and after a long moment he raised his head so that they were eye-to-eye, locking his golden gaze with her own. She kept her hand where it was, still stroking. "And you're not alone anymore," she said softly. "I'm here."

He smiled at that, a small smile that was sad and hopeful at the same time.

"Indeed you are," he said softly. "It is truly a miracle," he whispered. He reached up then to take her hand, the one that was still busily stroking the back of his head. He pulled it down so that he could kiss the back of it before entwining their fingers, his squeezing hers lightly. "So!" he said, changing the subject. "Why don't you show me what you've been reading, and I'll tell you what really happened?"

Swoop gave Mirage a long but silent look, understanding that he'd decided that he'd done enough soul-baring for one evening, and she had no desire to push him farther. She still didn't know quite what to make of him, but his hand felt surprisingly good wrapped around hers, and he had given her good advice as well as many things to think about, giving her a perspective that she hadn't had before. It was...helpful.

They still had a long road ahead of them, she and Mirage, but at least it seemed that they were _on_ a road now instead of blindly thrashing around in the wilderness searching for one. It was a start. Now they just needed to see where the road led.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my main regrets with this story is that its plot didn't really leave me a lot of room to develop its secondary characters. That's particularly the case with this universe's Optimus Prime, Prowl, and Megatron, who are all very different from their canon selves and the roles they fill in canon and, to me, they all are far more interesting than their canon selves. You get just hints about them in this story, alas. 
> 
> But! Since I've decided that I'm going to continue this continuity, at least this is something that I can rectify. In fact, I've started to write the second long story in this series and have a few big sections of it mostly done, and it's pretty much all about Prowl, Megatron and, to a lesser extent, Prime and it sort of flashes back to the past, to pre-Uprising Cybertron. So...Yeah, if you're reading this (or if you read it in its original form) and you're feeling (or felt) deprived of those characters (I know Prowl hasn't really appeared yet in this posting, and Megatron hasn't much yet, either, but both will soon), I guess take comfort in that there is more about them to come. :)


	11. Reconciliation

Swoop was perched cross-legged on top of the bank of supply cabinets that lined one wall of the treatment room, leaning back against the wall behind her and frowning at the datapad in her hand. She was trying to comprehend what the pad was telling her, but she was mostly failing because her attention kept being dragged, against her will, back to Starscream.

She was certain now that Starscream was still imprinted on her. Her certainty arose not from any tests or scans or comparisons that she could or would run but simply because she'd found that, whenever she was near Starscream, even though he was offline and unconscious, she felt something. Some shivery _something_ tugging at her. It was faint, but it was there, and it was familiar, too, like a faded echo of the gravity-like pull that she'd felt toward him before their encounter in Bolivia. The closer she was to him now, the stronger the tug became. 

Now, in the same small room with him, it was hard to stop touching him, from running her hands over him as if to reassure herself that he was there, and it was unsettling. Yet, she could not deny that the closer she was to Starscream, the more contented she felt. There was no other word for it. Even the new sparks within her, that would be ready to be taken from her and put into stasis any day now, seemed more settled and calm when she was nearer to Starscream. They stopped bumping up against each other and against her own consciousness in annoying-to-each-other ways that sent strong and unsettling surges of energy skittering through Swoop's systems at the most inconvenient of times. All of this confirmed to her satisfaction that the imprint between she and Starscream had not dissolved far better than the results of any test ever could. 

Swoop couldn't imagine what she'd feel when they brought him back online later. Nor could she imagine what _Starscream_ would feel -- what he _had been_ feeling, probably for weeks -- since the tugging on him was apparently far stronger than it was on her, strong enough that he'd been begging for it to end, perhaps even welcoming death if it meant that it would end. A part of Swoop felt vaguely guilty about that, and she was almost afraid to bring Starscream back online. Unconsciousness was certainly easier for him, and she was realizing that it would probably be easier on her, too. But she needed answers. And the biggest of them was: _Why_ did the imprint still exist?

So far as Swoop had read, it shouldn't. There was something very strange going on, and as far as Swoop could see, there were only three possibilities as to why. The answer to the situation could lie with her, with Starscream, or with the particular combination of the two of them together. If it was the first possibility, that didn't bode well at all. She would, over the course of her lifetime, experience thousands of cycles, and if she drove her partner crazy like this every time… She shuddered at the thought. Definitely not good. Fortunately, Swoop was fairly certain that the answer to the situation lay in the latter two possibilities. 

Because there was _definitely_ something odd about Starscream, beyond the obvious odd things.

She'd hardly been able to sleep the previous night. The combination of the things she'd learned during the hours that she'd ended up talking with Mirage and the questions in her mind about Starscream, specifically about the peculiar damage to his spark chamber, had served to plague her thoughts, and her thoughts refused to be quieted. Eventually, she'd given up the effort to sleep and had gone back to the medbay, many hours before her scheduled duty shift. She didn't care about the lost sleep. She needed some answers.

Which led her back to the datapad that she still held loosely in one hand. Tearing her gaze away from Starscream's peacefully unconsciousness face with an exasperated sigh, she returned her attention to the pad. The results of the tests and simulations she'd run during the course of the wee hours of the morning bore out that which she had already suspected: The only way to produce the very specific kind of damage that she'd discovered on Starscream's spark chamber was to infuse the spark that the chamber contained with strong bursts of energy. Which didn't make any sense at all because the easiest way to kill a member of their species was to direct a massive energy burst directly into the individual's spark. The only exception to that rule that existed at the moment was Swoop herself. Her spark could accept massive inputs of energy and either harmlessly disperse the excess energy through her systems if she wasn't in cycle, or otherwise absorb the energy and use it to produce new offspring sparks. This was the hyper-specialization that made her a queen. Of her entire species -- or at least the segment of it that called Cybertron home -- she alone had this ability.

Or so it was thought. Because apparently, Starscream had the ability, too. 

Swoop had thought, at first, that perhaps Starscream simply possessed an unusually-insulating spark chamber, but she'd quickly determined that that wasn't the case. Rather, he simply possessed an unusual _spark_ , one that had properties surprisingly similar to her own. Swoop doubted that he had the ability to reproduce as she did, but his spark could indeed accept massive energy inputs without it killing him. She imagined that the process was every bit as painful for him as it was for her, and it left him with the same very specific damage to the chamber that protected his spark that she herself sported after an infusion, but self-repair would take care of that easily enough, once Starscream had enough energon in him that that system would start to function again.

It wasn't inconceivable to Swoop that this similarity was why the imprint had not dissolved. Perhaps their similarities had caused a synergy between the two of them during the energy infusion that Starscream had given her. What was less conceivable to her was how and why Starscream had this very odd thing in common with her. 

She wondered if it was something that had been done to him, some sort of modification that had perhaps been inspired by or maybe even reverse-engineered from royal female physiology. The thought was extremely disturbing, but it made a sick sort of sense as well. Developing such a thing would have been a project right up the Decepticons' alley. In fact, such a project would have been right up _Starscream's_ alley, given his power-hungry streak, the fact that he wasn't ignorant of science especially for a warrior, plus the big, silver obstacle that stood in his way, not to mention the nature of the weapon that that big, silver obstacle wielded. The nature of Starscream's spark certainly made him very hard to kill with an energy-based weapon, which was a distinct advantage to Starscream. And if the condition could be replicated, it would make the Decepticons nigh on invincible. 

The horror that such a notion wrought within Swoop was eased only when she realized that if this was something that had been done to Starscream, with or without his consent, then certainly it would have been done to all of the Decepticons, or at least to a number of them, at least to those who, like Starscream, were always on the front lines. That just didn't seem to be the case. Decepticons seemed to be incapacitated and killed as easily as Autobots were.

So maybe it was something that had just happened to Starscream. Some freak event. Maybe even something evolutionary, for all that evolution in the genetic modification sense didn't apply to her species since the vast majority didn't possess anything that functioned like genes did in organic life. But if something like that was the case, Swoop found herself wondering if Starscream himself was aware of his nigh-invulnerability, but then she almost immediately dismissed the notion. Something told her that if Starscream had been aware that he was particularly hard to kill, then he wouldn't, for one, be known for cowardice and, for another, that he would have done something by now about that big, silver obstacle in his way, likely something spectacular, given Starscream's well-known penchant for the dramatic. So then Swoop found herself thinking that, if it was some sort of bizarre mutation, then perhaps it was a trait that could be passed down, and her hand, of its own volition, moved to stroke thoughtfully at her chest, fingers tapping against her armor absently, her mind settling into contemplating possibilities while staring at Starscream again.

Swoop's meandering thoughts were interrupted, long minutes later, when she realized that someone was knocking lightly on the treatment room's locked door. Tearing her gaze away from Starscream again and craning her head around so that she could see through the small window by the door, she saw that it was Wheeljack. He had a Seeker wing slung over his shoulder, and he didn't look happy.

Sighing, Swoop reached over and tapped at the panel by the door, entering the unlock code and silently gesturing for Wheeljack to enter. Wheeljack stomped into the room, dumped the dull grey wing on the floor, and propped it up against the wall. Straightening, he muttered something under his breath that Swoop couldn't quite catch and then unceremoniously turned around again, obviously quite intent on leaving immediately now that he'd made his final delivery. Swoop sighed again and then reached out to lay a hand on his arm, hoping to forestall his departure.

Swoop realized that this was perhaps the only opportunity she was going to get to heal the rift that had developed between them. At the very least, it was likely to be the only one that she was going to get before chaos started again, because she was certain that chaos of some kind was going to happen once Starscream was conscious again because chaos always seemed to follow his wake. And she desperately wanted to settle things with Wheeljack, although she wasn't quite sure how to go about doing so. Ratchet had advised her to talk to Wheeljack, but now that the opportunity to do so was here, she had no idea what to say to him. In fact, she wasn't even sure that he wouldn't just jerk away from her and storm away.

But he didn't. He turned and stared at her almost expectantly, but his limited expression wasn't anything like friendly, and Swoop suppressed a shiver. Under his disapproving scrutiny, Swoop said the only thing that occurred to her.

"Please talk to me," she said quietly.

Wheeljack's eyes narrowed, and then he angled a wary glance at Starscream.

"He can't hear you," Swoop assured him. "Please, Wheeljack."

"What do you want me to say?" Wheeljack asked as he dragged his distasteful gaze away from the inert Seeker. His voice entirely lacked its usual, jovial warmth, and Swoop shuddered again for its loss.

"You're angry at me," she answered, unfolding her legs and sliding down from her perch on the supply cabinets. Standing a few paces away from him, she looked up into Wheeljack's face earnestly. "And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I...that I did that to you. The queen thing, I mean. It just...came out, and I was way, way out of line."

"I'm not angry at you for that," Wheeljack protested flatly, without inflection, but his words rang false.

"Please don't lie to me," Swoop answered him with a frown. "I know what I did, and I want to fix it," she added in a small voice.

"I'm not lying to you. I know what you are, and I know that the transition isn't easy, and I know that until you're...settled...sometimes you're just going to say and do things. I'm over it. But you can't fix _this_ , Swoop," Wheeljack continued, his voice slightly and involuntarily rising, and he aimed a meaningful look at Starscream. "What's done is done, it seems."

"This is about Starscream?" Swoop inferred, suddenly confused.

"No," Wheeljack countered, "this is about _you_."

Swoop frowned, not understanding. And then Wheeljack, his brow fiercely creased with a scowl, reached out and snatched at her forearm. 

The one that was attached to the hand that had unconsciously taken to stroking up and down Starscream's leg.

"Primus, _look_ at yourself!" he cried, shaking her own hand in her face. "How can you be so…so _OK_ with him and with...what happened to you? So OK that you want to fix him up after doing such an excellent job of damaging him and shooting him down? So OK that you do _this_ now," he finished, shaking her arm again.

Swoop reared back from him, jerking her arm out of his grasp with a scowl of her own. Anger was nipping at her, now that she understood that Wheeljack was displeased with her for reasons that were entirely unjustified. She glared at him for a long moment, trying to rein in her temper since she was trying to heal a rift here, not widen it.

"Maybe it's because I had no choice in the matter," she answered, quietly at first, but her decibel level rose defensively and quickly as she continued. "Maybe it's because I know that he had no choice in the matter, either. Or here's an idea: Maybe it's because _I'm fragging glad it was him!_ "

Despite himself, Wheeljack took a reflexive step backward, away from her. She'd yelled that last bit at the top of her voice, and he couldn't remember ever seeing Swoop so angry, certainly not so quickly, and it was frightening to behold. Of the Dinobots, she was the even-keeled one, the one least likely to descend into anger and feral violence. But this was something that was obviously bothering her, something that had to have been simmering in her for a while or else she wouldn't have been set off so quickly. And the question on Wheeljack's mind was apparently obvious even with his limited expression, because in her next breath Swoop answered it, without Wheeljack having to ask it.

"If it had been _anyone_ here," Swoop snarled, the savage expression on her face frightening enough that Wheeljack took another step back from her, "it would have been _horrible_. Afterwards." She paused, pulled in a huge, calming breath, and after a long moment spent collecting herself, she finished in a less-angry tone, "And I don't know what I'll do when it happens again."

"Swoop—" Wheeljack tried to say, his voice and his demeanor softening quickly when he detected the fear suddenly underscoring her words, fear that was much larger than the anger had been, but she continued to speak over him, if she'd even heard him at all.

"It's _humiliating_ ," she was saying, the words pouring out of her, anger slowly bleeding from her as she spoke. She began to stalk around the limited space in the room as she continued, "You have no _idea_ how humiliating it is. It makes you do things you don't want to do with someone you don't want to do it with, and when I even begin to think about it happening again…" She shuddered demonstratively, then added, "If I'd grown up royal, I would have been _praying_ that this didn't happen to me. But it did happen to me, and somehow, having it happen with him?" she said, absently patting Starscream's shoulder as she paced. " _That_ , I can deal with. Because I don't have to face him every day."

Wheeljack could only stare at her, feeling like the universe's biggest jerk. He'd thought – Everyone had thought – that Swoop was handling things so well. Even Prowl, even _Optimus Prime_ had commented on it, but he'd just discovered that if the surface of Swoop's composure was pricked, it shattered and fell away, suddenly revealing the terrified and bewildered child behind the façade. _His own_ terrified and bewildered child, no less. He'd completely missed the emotional impact of Swoop's status. He'd assumed that the fact that it had been Starscream that she had…needed…would have been as repulsive to her as the mere thought of it was to him when it had instead made the situation easier for her. He had not taken that into account, and he'd been angry at her because of it. 

It was suddenly obvious to Wheeljack that he wasn't nearly as good at this parent thing as he had thought he was because being angry at his own kid because of his own prejudices and his own unthinking insensitivity had to be _way_ up there on the scale of bad parenting. 

"Oh, Swoop," he murmured, his shoulders slumping. "Sweetie, I'm sorry. I didn't realize what... I thought that--"

She gave him a hard look, golden eyes glittering dangerously, _regally_ , at him. It served to silence him, and he had to fight the impulse to take another step away from her, for entirely different reasons this time. "You thought that I have _feelings_ for him now or something," she surmised.

Wheeljack nodded. "And the thought of that just…" he said apologetically, gesturing helplessly. "And now you touch him, and--"

"I know," she interrupted quietly, her own shoulders slumping now. She took a moment to bury her face in her hands, rubbing at her face as she gathered her thoughts. "It's the imprint. It's still there."

Wheeljack stared at her for a beat, and then he blinked and answered, "That's impossible."

Swoop grimaced at that. "Yes, I know that," she said. "And yet I also know that it's true. I can't prove it with any kind of test or scan, but I feel it. Right _here_ ," she said, knocking her knuckles gently against her chest. "And it's quite obvious that _he's_ been feeling it, too, or else he wouldn't be here."

"You feel it?" Wheeljack questioned. "Even though he's..." he added, waving demonstratively at Starscream.

Swoop nodded and answered, "Yes. It's...it's a pull toward him, and if I don't pay attention to what I'm doing, I stare at him or touch him or... It just happens. I can't seem to help it, but it doesn't mean anything. And I'm afraid of what will happen when I wake him because he was acting completely crazy before I shot him down." She paused and then finished, almost in a whisper, almost quietly enough that Wheeljack couldn't hear what she said, "And I'm afraid of what's going to happen to me, too."

Wheeljack approached her then, close enough to be able to see the shudders that were passing through her body every now and then. Without thinking about it, he gathered her into his arms. She neither protested nor resisted, instead reflexively snuggling in as closely as possible against him, resting her cheek over his spark and listening to its slow and always-comforting pulse, just as she'd done all her life when something was upsetting her. It was a privilege that only she had had since she was the only Dinobot small enough to fit into Wheeljack's lap, and she had many warm, fuzzy memories of drifting off to sleep snuggled against him, listening to the sound of his voice and the pulse of his spark. Now, her body shook uncontrollably. It happened sometimes when she was alone, when she didn't have to put up a front and when there was nothing to distract her, when the larger and quite overwhelming implications of her status assaulted her mind.

"It's OK," Wheeljack comforted her, just as he had done when she'd been a few months old, when she'd been just as bewildered as she was right now, only in a different way and for different reasons. He worked his arms around her wings so that he could stroke her back gently, and he rocked her slowly back and forth, as if she was still that bewildered newborn. "It'll be OK, Little Bit," he whispered to her, nuzzling at the top of her head. "We'll figure everything out, I promise."

Just as she always did, Swoop believed Wheeljack's promise. Because somehow, some _way_ , he always managed to make good on them.


	12. Reunion

Voices were floating around Starscream in layers of mysterious and indistinct murmurings. The words were initially indecipherable, but as time passed, they occasionally began to resolve into intelligible but random words. And then the murmuring voices slowly became distinct from each other, and as they became distinct, they also started to become individually recognizable.

One of the voices was _hers_. He'd been hearing her voice in his head for so long now that it was almost as familiar to him as his own. Yet even as he listened to her voice, listened to the calm contralto timbre of it, the rhythm of it, picking out words here and there, Starscream was still eighty-five percent certain that it existed only in own head. The fraction of uncertainty that he harbored stemmed from the fact that her voice was suddenly soothing rather than maddening. It felt closer to him, too. More immediate. Less like a distant and indistinct echo of a dream that only faintly reached his senses. It was stronger than it had ever been, and he half-unwillingly clung to it, wrapped himself in it as he drifted back down into the warm unconsciousness that was still pawing at him.

Some indeterminate amount of time passed, and when Starscream next staggered toward consciousness, the voices were still there, clearer now. Some of them were different, some the same. _She_ was still there, and it slowly became very apparent to Starscream, as he recognized another voice, that this time she was quietly speaking with Ratchet. His processors were moving at a speed at which they might have cause to envy the speed of glaciers, but he managed to wonder why he would be hearing her speaking with Ratchet in his head, particularly because he could hear both sides of the exchange between them. While he'd become rather used to Swoop's voice in his head, because he hadn't had a choice in the matter, Ratchet being in there was entirely new and not exactly welcome. He seemed to be the subject of discussion, however. He'd heard his name mentioned a few times, before he'd been able to comprehend anything else that they'd been saying. He was fairly certain that the mentions of his name were what had again roused him from the happy stupor in which he'd been floating. 

Starscream tried to move then and even managed somewhat to succeed at the task, only to discover that he was restrained. The restraints were not terribly tight, but they were tight enough that it was guaranteed that he wasn't going to be getting off the berth that he was apparently lying on, particularly not in his only marginally-coherent state. The restraints added a level of realism to what may or may not have been an hallucination. One was usually not restrained in one's psychotic delusions, so either his psychosis was becoming even more dubiously creative or…maybe it wasn't an hallucination. He decided that some optical input might be helpful.

Lights that were far too bright and a sea of nauseating orange greeted him. He would never understand the Autobots' fascination with the color…

Autobots. The thought was enough to trigger bleary recollections of recent events, which ran through Starscream's mind with dizzying speed and in somewhat jumbled order. If he was not currently hallucinating, then he had actually managed to accomplish his goal of reaching Autobot Headquarters. He didn't remember much of the flight, and perhaps that was just as well. He did have faint but firm impressions that it had been extremely difficult to remain aloft at times, and he had a sneaking suspicion that all that had kept him the air had been sheer desperation.

Starscream tried to say something then, but the only sound that emerged from him was a dull syllable that sounded faintly like, "Muh?" The incoherent sound was enough to attract the attention of the two medics, though, and their faces were suddenly floating above him. Starscream only cared about one of them, and he focused solely and narrowly on her.

Biting his lower lip in focused concentration, Starscream lifted his arm. He was fairly certain that there was enough slack in the restraint to allow him to rest the palm of his hand flat against Swoop's chest as she leaned over him. He moved to do so, but immediately became aware that this caused some sort of commotion to occur in the small room that he was occupying. He turned his head toward the noise, squinting in an effort to see past the fuzziness, and recognized those infernal Lamborghinis, apparently here in case he decided to cause some mayhem. Not that he would have minded causing some mayhem, but he was truly not up to the task, at least not at the moment. Apparently Ratchet  
realized this because he saw the medic make a gesture to stay the twins' approach. So then Starscream did what he wanted to do, laying his hand against Swoop's chest. In response, she laid one of her hands over his, pressing his hand more firmly against herself as if she knew what he wanted. What he needed.

And he felt it, then. Her spark, its energy pulsing steadily and strongly through her armor; he could feel it against his hand, feel its rhythm, dimly recognized that it seemed to match his own. But there were echoes of other pulses in there, too. Weaker, fainter, and Starscream blearily recognized that she was still carrying offspring sparks.

Sparks that he had helped to create. He bit down harder on his lip then, not knowing exactly what to think about that, particularly not in his current state of stupor. But the warmth and solidity of her and the gleaming smoothness of the deep blue armor under his hand were all tangible and reassuringly _real_. The pull that he felt toward her, strong even through the persistent fog that plagued him, was yet another sign.

She was real, Starscream decided. Most definitely real. And he most definitely wanted her, oh yes. But he couldn't follow through with the want right now. He couldn't follow through with much of anything right now. Instead, Starscream let out a long, steadying breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding in.

"Real," he murmured, patting Swoop approvingly, although he was appalled at the weakness of his own voice. And then his arm flopped weakly back against the berth. It, too, was weak. He was weak, too much so even to keep his arm raised any longer. Too much so to do anything.

"Yes," Swoop was murmuring back, meanwhile. "I'm real. You came here and asked for me. And then I blew you out of the sky."

Starscream nodded faintly once, the slight movement making his world nauseatingly spinny.

"I 'member," he said thickly. "Nice shot," he complimented woozily, after a brief moment of reflection, his voice slurring.

Swoop snorted dismissively.

"A human with a BB gun could have shot you down, Starscream," she pointed out dryly. "I'm surprised you made it here."

"Me, too," Starscream agreed. He was muzzy and suddenly happy for some reason that his dulled processors couldn't quite pinpoint. He had to fight the urge to laugh madly and, to distract himself if nothing else, he shifted slightly against the berth that he was lying on in an impossible quest to find a more comfortable position. Faint twinges of pain ran through his body in response, and he groaned as his movements set off another wave of spinny nausea that crashed insistently through him.

"Easy there," Swoop murmured softly, lifting a hand to run it gently over his head. Her hand was comfortingly cool against him, and her touch seemed to have the power to instantly soothe him, although he suspected that if he wasn't still half-unconscious her touch would have been greatly arousing instead. "It'll take a while for the system suppressants to wear off," Swoop was saying quietly. "Just rest. Primus knows you need it after what you've done to yourself. We'll talk later."

"Mmkay," Starscream acknowledged faintly. "Such a nice medic," he added dreamily, after a moment's consideration.

The last thing Starscream heard before he drifted off into la-la-land again was Swoop snorting again, but this time the snort, he realized, was covering up a laugh.

* * * * * *

When Starscream next awoke, he was about twenty levels higher on the awareness scale and, so his chronometer told him, about eight hours had passed. Swoop was still – or perhaps again – in the room, her back to him at the moment. He studied her for a long moment, silently, so as not to draw attention to the fact that he was conscious again.

He had vague recollections of having noted that Swoop looked different now, and this he was now noting again. Vanity perhaps had compelled the change in her, but whatever had compelled it, Starscream found himself approving of it. She was still the same size, still small and deceptively delicate-looking, but she was more curves than angles now, streamlined where once she had been boxy and cumbersome and, indeed, primitive-looking. Her color scheme was pleasing, and the added gold and subtracted dull grey served to make her physical form better match her status. She practically glowed, drawing the eye to her, the geometry of her armor carefully designed to catch the light and then to let it play over the new gold expanses of her body. Her wings were mostly folded down against her back, no doubt for convenience's sake when maneuvering in small rooms, something that he found himself envying a little. Squinting, he could just pick out part of a line of small glyphs, brushed silver inlaid into the edge of a folded section of golden wing. 

He thought that Swoop was real. The hallucinations had grown disturbingly convincing as time had passed, but he was inclined to believe that what he was seeing was a level of detail that would be difficult for even deep psychosis to conjure. Still, he wasn't sure. He had very vague recollections of determining that Swoop was real when he'd woken before, but then he wasn't sure that _that_ memory was real.

He groaned. It was so frustrating, existing in a place of uncertainty about absolutely everything. He tried to bring his hands up to cover his face with them, but he was still, of course, restrained. The groan and the movements served to bring Swoop's attention to him, though, as well as the attention of the others in the room. The slight noise that they made as they shifted to alertness was enough to divert Starscream's attention from Swoop for a moment.

Surprisingly...or maybe not...Prowl was there. A couple of the other Dinobots were there, too. Grimlock in his intimidating and far too toothy dinosaur form and the one with the damned flamethrowers, one of which he was meaningfully toying with at the moment. Their presence meant that there wasn't much space left over in the small room that Starscream inhabited, but it wasn't as if anyone else was needed. It vaguely occurred to Starscream that perhaps he should be flattered. Three Dinobots, plus Prowl, were apparently required to make sure that he in his weakened state behaved himself. 

And of course he couldn't resist tweaking Prowl. Just a little bit. Just for old times' sake.

"Well, hello, Prowl," he murmured, trying not to wince at the weakness of his voice. "Still having fun slumming with the civils, are we?"

Prowl scowled in response, eyes narrowed to thin red slits. "More fun than you're going to be having, Starscream," he said levelly, that smooth-as-glass voice of his rumbling down into its lower register.

"Really?" Starscream responded mildly. He paused dramatically for a moment, then added, "Wait, was that supposed to be some sort of threat? How _delightful_!"

"Take it in whatever way you wish, Starscream," Prowl answered noncommittally.

"Ah, Prowl," Starscream purred in amusement. "Good to see that some things truly never change. Megatron sends his warmest regards, by the way. You do remember him, yes? Silver? Ridiculously large gun? Liked you an _awful_ lot, once upon a time?"

Prowl scowled again, refusing to verbally take the bait, but he did take a threatening step or three toward Starscream's berth, his doorwings raised high with annoyance. _Good old Prowl_ , Starscream thought as he gleamed a provocative grin at the tactician.

"Stop it, both of you," Swoop growled, stepping in.

There was impressive authority in her voice, and Starscream realized that she was using it to cow Prowl, who gave her a measuring look, surprise flickering across his features in a way that no one but someone who knew him very well would recognize as such before he subsided like the good, obedient little warrior that he was, his posture relaxing even though he kept right on scowling at Starscream. Swoop was obviously learning, then. For all Starscream knew, she had all the warriors in the Autobot ranks kowtowing and catering to her every whim by now, just like her predecessor. Maybe Prowl was her favorite plaything, even.

Starscream turned his head to look at Swoop then, ignoring the resulting faint sense of dizziness. He stared at Swoop, and she met his gaze squarely…and then Starscream found that he couldn't look away from her. Or, more accurately, that he didn't _want_ to look away from her. What he wanted to do was to leap off the berth and shove her up against the closest wall and make her do that wonderfully enticing screech that she did when-- 

He gritted his teeth, trying to force such thoughts from his mind, trying to block the images that trailed after the thoughts, trying to calm himself in the face of her being real and, worse, _standing right there_ , only a couple of meters away from him. So close and yet so far…

Despite his efforts, as if of its own volition, one of his arms started to yank violently at one of the restraints that was tethering him. It didn't give, so he just kept yanking at it with steadily increasing force, until the restraint began to chafe and then bite into his arm. He didn't even feel it. Involuntarily, Swoop took a step toward Starscream…and then yelped when, unexpectedly, Prowl grabbed hold of her, staying her. He gave the other two Dinobots a curt jerk of his chin toward Starscream, and they moved to hold Starscream down, none-too-gently stopping his struggling.

"Careful!" Swoop admonished them. "Don't ruin all my hard work."

Starscream struggled against the grip of the two Dinobots, but even if he hadn't been restrained and had been at one hundred percent – which he wasn't, not by a long shot – he couldn't have pushed them off of him. One Dinobot alone was much stronger than he was. _Swoop_ , the smallest of them, was stronger than he was. His only advantage over her, when they weren't in the air, was that he was bigger and heavier than she was. Two Dinobots against him was decidedly unfair. And eventually, because he had no other choice, Starscream surrendered to their superior strength, flopping back against the berth in frustration and panting from exertion. Warnings were flashing in red across his diagnostics about something or other, but he'd gotten used to ignoring them over the past few weeks, so he paid them no mind. 

He also paid them no mind because Swoop, after breaking Prowl's grip on her with a displeased scowl and then giving him an insistent gesture that clearly said "Stay there," was approaching him. There was an odd look on her face as she moved toward him, as if she suddenly wasn't quite all there. Ducking around Grimlock and none-too-gently shoving him out of her way, she stood at the side of Starscream's berth, her arms folded over her chest, regarding Starscream inquisitively for a long moment. Starscream, held down firmly by Dinobot strength, could only stare helplessly back at her, still panting but not only from exertion now, while everything that he was, every instinct that he possessed, was screaming at him to somehow throw off Swoop's brothers and gather her to him and pull her down on the berth and—

And then Swoop was suddenly leaning down, was suddenly kissing him. It was a hard kiss, nothing gentle in it at all, and as it went on everything – every thought, every possible word that he might utter, every course of action that he might undertake, every desire except one, everything – instantly drained from Starscream. The pressure on his body eased up for some reason – likely because of surprise on the other Dinobots' parts – and he was able to reach up, as much as the tethering restraints allowed, to pull at Swoop, to pull her down toward him. She didn't protest, not for the awkward half-embrace. 

She did, however, protest mightily when Prowl abruptly yanked her away.

She spun on Prowl with a scarily feral snarl that didn't seem to faze Prowl in the slightest, and they hurled angry words at each other after that, but Starscream paid them no mind, barely heard them at all. His processors were too busy reeling, his sensory net tingling with sensation that raced voraciously through him. Rather than easing the want of her, the kiss had made it worse, drowning the more rational voice in his head that wondered why in the world she'd done it. He didn't care why she'd done it. He just wanted more. He was gathering his strength to struggle against his bonds again, Dinobots be damned, and he was stayed only by a piercing cry that suddenly and quite obviously came from Swoop. He cranked his head over to look at her, ignoring the dizziness the sudden movement caused, alarmed. There was a pained expression on Swoop's face, she was gasping for breath, and she had both arms pressed tightly over her chest. And then her entire body jerked and she began to collapse against Prowl, her legs no longer up to the task of supporting her weight.

Prowl called urgently for Ratchet over his comm as Swoop collapsed against him, and he lowered her gently to the floor, ending up with her leaning against him as he supported her weight. Starscream, meanwhile, began to struggle violently, ignoring virulently red warnings that flashed across his diagnostics, but this only prompted Grimlock literally to sit on him, while Slag just stared, dumbfounded, at Swoop. Ratchet skidded into the room then, narrowly avoiding plowing full speed into Slag. He took in the scene for a split-second, and then made a dash for Swoop's side, pausing only to make a quick pit stop at Starscream's berth. Without a word to the Seeker or to anyone else, Ratchet injected something into one of the many lines that were feeding directly into Starscream's systems, and his world almost instantly began to go black. His ineffectual struggles against the restraints and against Grimlock sitting on him ceased entirely as his body began to go completely numb. The last thing that he heard was Swoop beginning to utter a constant wail. The wavering note of it seemed to Starscream to go on and on, stretched into infinity as it chased him down into blackness. The last thought that entered his mind was some absurd notion that he needed to help Swoop, that he needed to protect her, that that was his _job_. But then…

Then there was nothing.


	13. Resolve

Ratchet made a beeline for Swoop as soon as she walked into the medbay, a look of both worry and resolve on his face.

"You were right," he said quietly, without preamble, as he handed her a datapad.

Swoop frowned down at the pad, for a moment having no idea what Ratchet was talking about. Her thoughts were scattered and distracted. Even after two days of enforced rest, she still felt disoriented and strangely, uncomfortably empty. She'd gotten used to the presence of the offspring sparks, and now that they were gone -- all fifteen of them perfect and amazing and the most beautiful things she'd ever seen and, now, safely in stasis -- she missed them. Being alone again was going to take some getting used to, and she was certain that going back to work would help. Staring at the walls of her quarters for two days certainly hadn't helped one iota. Especially because her brothers had been annoying, enforcing all of Ratchet's instructions to her and to them to the letter. The discussion that Ratchet had had with them about taking medical matters into their own hands must have put the fear of Primus -- or at least of Ratchet himself -- into them.

Ratchet, meanwhile, was continuing to talk at Swoop, while she only half-listened to him, selectively picking out the important things that he was telling her. He told her that they'd run some further tests on Starscream during her downtime, the results of which were on the pad that she now held. The tests and scans confirmed to Ratchet's satisfaction what Swoop already knew all too well, that the imprint between she and Starscream still existed. Swoop resisted the urge to spit an "I told you so" at him, and then her snippiness faded altogether as Ratchet further explained that he'd devised something of a temporary, stopgap solution to the problem at hand, completely bypassing certain of Starscream's systems while suppressing others. The "treatment" seemed to make him less desperately crazy and much more lucid, but Ratchet acknowledged that it really wasn't good for Starscream in the long term. It was merely buying them some time to come up with a more permanent solution to the problem at hand.

If there was one.

Swoop had given that particular problem an awful lot of thought during her days of downtime, since she hadn't had much else to do, and since it had become something of a concern for her during those two days. She had come up with an idea, but she wasn't about to let Ratchet know what it was yet. It would freak him out. And first, she needed to have a talk with Starscream, anyway.

Thanking Ratchet absently, Swoop pulled her own datapad out of its storage compartment in the side of her hip. It still contained the data from the scans that she'd performed on Starscream herself and the simulations that she'd run, the ones that had confirmed the unusual nature of Starscream's spark. She appended the data from Ratchet's pad to it, handed the empty pad back to Ratchet, and then headed toward the room where Starscream was now housed. It didn't even occur to her to be surprised that she knew exactly where Starscream was without asking. 

They'd moved him to a larger room in her absence, one that was more secure but that had a large window. If she were in Starscream's position, being able to see the sky would at least offer some measure of comfort. It wasn't surprising that Ratchet had thought of it, since he'd had to get used to compensating for her own noticeable streak of flier claustrophobia. He probably figured that Starscream being able to see outside would give him one less thing to be crazy about. 

"Where are you going?" Ratchet called after Swoop as she moved purposefully toward Starscream's location.

She paused, turned back to him.

"I need to talk to Starscream," she answered simply, as if that should have been obvious, before turning away again to resume her journey.

"Wait!" Ratchet called out. "Not by yourself. I'll—"

Swoop stopped in her tracks again, turned back to face him, glowered at him.

"By. Myself," she snipped, brooking no argument. "What I need to say to him no one else needs to hear. Not even you." At Ratchet's troubled look, she waved her datapad at him meaningfully and added, "He won't hurt me." And then she crossed her arms over her chest defiantly, staring Ratchet down until he subsided. "We just need to settle this between us, Ratchet," Swoop said then, far more softly, attempting to mollify him. "That's all."

Ratchet sighed resignedly, silently acquiescing, and Swoop turned away from him again, heading unerringly for Starscream's location. As she turned away from Ratchet, she heard him mutter, "Sure. That's all. Settle it. Just like that."

Just like that, indeed. Or so Swoop hoped, anyway.

******

When Swoop walked into the room, Starscream was sitting on the berth, leaning back against the raised head of it and staring expressionlessly at the window in the opposite wall, deep in thought. Or psychosis. Or something. He wasn't restrained anymore, and while that was surprising, Swoop supposed that the monitors and feed lines and myriad system bypasses that were attached to him were tethering him almost as well as actual restraints would. If he moved too much, he'd end up tearing out some pretty vital components. And, as she had reminded Ratchet, he would not hurt her because he'd have to be utterly stupid to do so. He needed her.

And Swoop needed him, too. Wanted him.

This was what she had discovered during her two days of enforced rest. During that time, the want had started to consume her, no doubt strengthened by Starscream's proximity, the fact that he was conscious again, and the fact that she no longer harboring offspring sparks. Ironically, she hadn't been able to rest much during her days of enforced rest because of the burning, aching want. The need. Swoop realized now that carrying the offspring sparks had suppressed the effects of the imprint on her, but even so she had still felt compelled to have an impromptu make-out session with Starscream. With an audience, no less. Now, it picked and poked at her with rapidly increasing strength. It was also shortening her temper and making her twitch and fidget, whispering urgently at her to just go to Starscream, to take him. Have him. It would be so easy, and they both needed it, wanted it. It was very hard not to heed the call, and Swoop knew – from experience now – that it would only become harder to resist as time passed, until she could no longer resist it at all. She'd end up doing much worse than engaging in a public make-out session with Starscream if she wasn't careful.

It occurred to Swoop only just then that _this_ was what had been clawing relentlessly at Starscream for almost six weeks now, and because it had been so long, it was probably many degrees of magnitude worse than what she was experiencing. Her level of sympathy skyrocketed, and she had to admire Starscream's restraint, his level of self-control, because hers began to fray as soon as Starscream's full attention settled on her. His gaze was dull and somewhat unfocused, but it nonetheless sent shivers through her that took effort to suppress. 

Distraction. She needed a distraction.

Tearing her gaze from Starscream's, she fiddled with the datapad she held and asked of him, "You are something of scientist, yes?"

Starscream didn't answer for a long moment, so she glanced up from the datapad to see that he was giving her a look that was befuddled and wary at the same time, no doubt wondering if it was wise to answer her innocuous but odd question. He obviously expected to be interrogated at some point, and he was probably not expecting anything civilized in that regard, given who he was. Certain Autobots were indeed chomping at the bit to get their hands on him, and Swoop knew that they had no intention of being gentle with him. She was equally determined that no one was going to touch him, not until she understood what had happened, what was obviously _still_ happening, between them. This was making those certain Autobots -- most notably Prowl -- very irritated with her, but they would just have to deal with it, at least for now.

"Sometimes," Starscream decided to answer Swoop's question then, bringing her back to the here-and-now. His manner was guarded, suspicious, his voice quiet. His attention was focused on her yet somehow detached at the same time, as if he wasn't quite all there. This was, no doubt, the intended effect of Ratchet's cobbled-together treatment of Starscream's condition. "When the situation calls for it," Starscream added, "I am probably the closest thing we have to a scientist. Why?"

Swoop nodded at that, not answering right away. Instead, she toyed with the datapad that she held in her hands, staring down at it, suddenly reconsidering the wisdom of revealing to Starscream the information that it contained. The medic in her knew that he had a right to know everything about himself. The Autobot in her thought that the that less he, as a Decepticon, knew about this particular aspect of himself, the better. But then, she argued back with herself, Starscream was quick and probably much smarter than the Autobots gave him credit for. If nothing else, if he were stupid, he wouldn't be the warrior caste's Air Commander, so she was certain that he would figure it all out for himself soon enough, if he hadn't already done so, given recent evidence. Going ahead and giving him the information, whether or not he'd figured things out for himself, might begin to establish a level of trust between them. Swoop had a feeling that they would need mutual trust, among other things, going forward.

Making her decision, Swoop waved the datapad at him and said, "Well, I thought you might be interested in this." She approached Starscream's berth more closely, watching his body become more tense with each step toward him that she took. When she was within arm's reach, she offered him the datapad without any further explanation.

Starscream frowned at her and then at the device that she was offering to him, his gaze flicking between it and her. His eyes were narrowed suspiciously, as if he thought that she might be offering him a ticking bomb, and it was only reluctantly that he reached out and took the pad from her. His fingers brushed hers incidentally as he did so, and Swoop had to fight to suppress a gasp at the contact, at the electric sensation that knifed through her like a lightning bolt. He wasn't able to suppress a similar reaction, and after he snatched the datapad roughly out of her hand, she stepped a few paces back from him. As if that would make some huge difference. As if she hadn't been driving him crazy from thousands of kilometers away, much less a mere meter or two away. She pushed back the flash of guilt that the thought evoked.

Swoop watched as Starscream began to read the information that the pad contained. She watched his expression shift rapidly between suspicion, shock, confusion, disbelief, and eventual understanding, his eyes alternately narrowing and widening as he took in the information, until something like satisfaction settled over him as. She knew how he felt, knew well the feeling of satisfaction that arose when all of the confused, scattered, and seemingly unrelated pieces of a puzzle started to come together to make a coherent picture. After he had finished reading, after he'd taken a few moments to digest and assimilate what he'd read, Starscream let out a breath that he'd seemed to be holding for years, if the length and the force of it were any indication.

"This…" he said faintly a moment later, shaking the datapad meaningfully and then tilting his head back to stare up at the ceiling, "explains much." After a considered and somewhat awkward pause, he added, still without looking at Swoop, "Thank you for sharing this with me. I know that you didn't have to do that."

"You're welcome," Swoop answered quietly. She couldn't think of anything else to say to him for a moment, but then, curiosity getting the better of her as usual, she asked, "So did you know about...?"

"About the imprint not breaking? Yes, that became rather obvious to me when I started to lose touch with reality," he replied, answering her unspoken question with not a little bitterness. "But about my spark being...weird? No. But it does make some sense, I suppose. I knew that _something_ was off when I..."

"When you tried to kill yourself and it didn't work?" Swoop finished for him with a sad little smile as his voice trailed off, and when Starscream gave her a surprised look in response, she shrugged and added, "Don't look so surprised. I _am_ a medic, you know. The damage to your spark chamber made what you'd done pretty obvious to me. Especially since I'd recently gone through the same thing," she finished pointedly.

His mouth twisted into a grimace at that as he answered, "I suppose so."

"And I can only imagine that you wouldn't have done that unless you _wanted_..." Swoop ventured.

Starscream heaved a long sigh. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. He paused for a long moment and then added, not looking at Swoop, almost as if he was talking to himself, "There have been many times in my life when I thought I was at the end of my rope, but that time... That time I truly was. In fact, I probably still am, but..." His voice trailed off as he waved vaguely at the equipment that was attached to him in addition to that which was surrounding him.

"I'm sorry," Swoop said quietly to him. "I can't imagine what this has been like for you."

"Nor do you want to imagine it, I assure you," he answered. "But unless this is something that you did to me intentionally, it isn't your fault any more than it is mine."

She shook her head at him and said, "No, I didn't do anything intentionally. If I'd wanted to do something to you intentionally, it wouldn't have been...that."

Starscream smiled at her wanly and said, "No, you Dinobots aren't known for subtlety, are you? So I imagine it would've been more like tearing me limb from limb, ripping my head off, and then eating my spark for breakfast."

Swoop gave him a disturbingly toothy, predatory smile and answered, "Something like that, yes."

Starscream snorted at that, and then was quiet for a time. Eventually, he ventured, "May I ask a question?" 

Swoop blinked curiously at him, her head tilted a bit to the side. "You can ask," she said levely. "I can't guarantee that I'll answer."

"Fair enough," he responded with a small nod, and then he asked, "Why are _you_ , of all people, a queen? Why did _any_ of this happen in the first place?"

Swoop swallowed uncertainly, took a step back from him, and deliberated for a long moment about telling him the truth. But then, after realizing that there was nothing to be either gained or lost by doing so, she answered quietly, "Because I am my mother's daughter."

"Your…what?" Starscream responded, after a long moment spent giving Swoop a very befuddled look.

Drawing in a steadying breath, Swoop straightened her shoulders and repeated more loudly, more confidently, "My mother's daughter. You once knew me as Eclipse."

Starscream blinked at her, his expression becoming disbelieving.

"Eclipse," he repeated dully after a long moment of speechlessness. "The infant. But she was…"

"She… _I_ wasn't killed," Swoop said. "Obviously. My spark ended up in stasis somehow, and it happened to be one of the ones that the Autobots brought with them when they left Cybertron. And then when it was time to create me…Well, here I am. Apparently, my spark was one of the ones that was less badly damaged when the Ark crashed, so it was one of the ones chosen when the Autobots decided they wanted some Seeker ass-kickers."

"But that's…impossible," Starscream protested weakly, completely ignoring her jab. He was staring at Swoop as if he was incapable of looking away from her, as if someone had riveted his gaze to her face. "Royal sparks can't be transplanted, so you can't...you can't be...her."

"And yet, here I am," Swoop repeated, flippantly this time, when his voice trailed off. Despite herself, a grin was tugging at her face. She couldn't help it. Starscream's stunned expression, his eyes wide and his mouth cycling from open to closed like a landed fish, was greatly amusing.

Once he'd found his voice again, Starscream asked, "Are you…certain?" He seemed a bit dazed, more so than the revelation would seem to warrant, and Swoop wondered why.

"As certain as we can be," she answered with a shrug. "There are great similarities between my spark and Mirage's, at the very least. And nothing else really makes sense. I suppose I might not be Eclipse, maybe one of the others, but—"

A short bark of humorless laughter escaped Starscream then, interrupting what had devolved into babbling. Swoop frowned at him, a bit bewildered by his reaction.

"Oh, you are most certainly Eclipse!" Starscream declared with utter certainty, his face twisted into a smirk that Swoop couldn't interpret. "And I must say that the irony of _that_ is absolutely delicious."

Swoop blinked at him, becoming more confused as he continued to snicker madly.

"I don't understand," she confessed.

"Of course you don't!" Starscream answered flippantly, still chuckling. "But maybe someday you will. Maybe someday, if you're very good, I'll even _tell_ you."

Swoop resisted the urge to demand that he tell her right now, resisting because, if nothing else, she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to know. She'd had enough surprises and revelations over the course of the last couple of months. She really didn't think that she could handle too many more. Swoop couldn't think of anything to say to Starscream, though, so a silence settled between them. It was a silence that wasn't necessarily comfortable, heavily charged as it was. Starscream was still staring at Swoop, sizing her up now as if he was a starving lion and she a gravely-wounded wildebeest. She tried to drag her gaze away from his but discovered that she couldn't, which wasn't really surprising since she hadn't been able to stop staring at him or touching him since his unceremonious arrival. And as they stared at each other, Swoop felt a heat building in herself, and it was suddenly just as it had been when he'd first awoken and she'd felt the pull between them strengthen exponentially. It was all she could do now to resist going to him, touching him…

Vaguely, it occurred to her that she should leave, come back later to finish the conversation, because being so close to Starscream for any extended period of time was probably not the best of all possible ideas, not for her and certainly not for him. She was just turning to make good her escape when Starscream finally decided to speak up. It was almost as if he didn't want her to leave.

"So!" he said. "You really are the genuine article, then. Not some freak, miraculous mutation."

"Yes," Swoop answered faintly, halting her retreat and turning slowly back to him, inevitably but not completely willingly meeting his gaze. "I am who I am supposed to be. At least, that's what everyone tells me."

"Mmmm," Starscream murmured noncommittally, nodding. "And I am," he added after a moment, waving the datapad he still held in one hand meaningfully in the air, "immortal."

"Not exactly _immortal_ ," Swoop qualified. "But definitely harder to kill than most, at least when it comes to energy input directly into your spark. You're like me that way, actually, since you seem to be enjoying irony so much today."

Starscream snorted, and then stared at her curiously and intently as something seemed to occur to him.

"Do you think it possible," he asked, "that this is why the imprint hasn't gone away? Because we have this…similarity?"

He was quick and smart, indeed. Dangerously so. "Maybe," Swoop hedged. "That's one hypothesis, anyway," she added, smiling at him faintly.

"It's _your_ hypothesis, isn't it?" he guessed, giving her a speculative, narrow-eyed look.

"Maybe," she repeated with an enigmatic smile.

He snorted at that and then said, tilting his head to the side as another thought occurred to him, "And if you're right, then it's not going to go away." His gaze drilled into her, demandingly, as he added, "I'll be stuck here, with you medics doing Primus-knows-what to my systems to keep me from losing my mind. Again."

Swoop bit down hard on her lower lip as his voice trailed off, as he turned his face away from her to stare almost longingly out of the window.

She answered him honestly, "I don't know, Starscream. There's no precedent for this, so I can't know. It might not go away, no. But I did have a thought on that."

He turned his gaze back to her then, leveling a penetrating and inquisitive look on her, and Swoop could have sworn that his eyes were suddenly glowing a brighter red as he narrowed them at her, his expression calculating.

"Do tell," he cooed at her.

Swoop swallowed nervously, hesitating, while Starscream just watched her, expectantly. The look on his face pulled at her, and she found herself taking a few involuntary steps toward him. Starscream, unmoving, simply continued to stare at her, and then words began to tumble out of her mouth, as if their own volition.

"When we were…together," she said, "there were… Well, there were things that were wrong with me."

Starscream gave her a twisted, ironic smile as he answered, "There were things wrong with _both_ of us that night, Swoop."

"Besides that," she said quietly, ducking her head in embarrassment. "My spark was…It was rejecting my body. As you said, royal sparks aren't supposed to be transplanted, and things started to go crazy. So when I came back here, my systems started crashing and I almost died, would have died if..."

"Hence the new body?" Starscream concluded as her voice trailed off uncertainly, his expression curious. "Not just a vanity thing then, eh?"

Swoop blinked at him. Quick. Very quick. Even with his thought processes detached and dulled by Ratchet's "treatment," he was putting things together with ease.

"No," she said. "No, not at all. I just…woke up with it. It was designed and built to be compatible with my spark and with my...function. That it's prettier than my old one is just a fringe benefit," she added lightly, forcing a smile.

Starscream nodded, smiling faintly in return as he digested what she'd told him.

"So," he said a moment later, "you nearly died. And I've gone insane because the imprint didn't go away. And you think that it happened because of your troubles, combined with our odd similarities."

Swoop nodded.

" _That_ is my hypothesis, yes," she said quietly.

"And your proposed solution to the problem?" Starscream asked after a moment of silence between them. His voice was suddenly intense, and his gaze burned into Swoop, heating her from the inside out. "Assuming, of course, that it isn't the same 'solution' that Ratchet is subjecting me to."

The intensity of his stare pulled at her, and Swoop found herself approaching him yet more closely, this time going so far as to hitch one thigh up onto the very edge of his berth, putting herself extremely close to him but still not touching him. Even so, Starscream's breath hitched and then quickened, and a noticeable shiver ran through his body, but he otherwise held himself in check, his hands balling into fists with the effort.

Lowering her voice, as if she was afraid that someone would overhear, Swoop leaned dangerously close to Starscream, so that they were eye-to-eye, faces mere inches apart, and murmured, "I think that now that I'm...settled, we need to repeat the experiment, so to speak. Maybe then things will reset as they're supposed to."

Starscream stared at her for a long moment, his gaze bright and locked with hers. His limbs twitched as he fought to keep them still. "Except," he said, his voice shuddering as more shivers ran through him, "that we still have that similarity, so it might not—"

"But it might," she interrupted him insistently. "And it can hardly make things worse. At worst, it will give you – _both_ of us – some peace for a little while."

"Until it starts all over again," Starscream retorted with a quiet snort. His voice was low, but the bitterness in it was obvious.

"Yes," Swoop answered matter-of-factly.

"And _then_ what?"

"And then… Another treatment, so to speak," she said, running one finger delicately down the center of his canopy, her eyes following and absorbing its path.

Starscream went utterly still at the contact and at her words. Swoop looked up into his face again to see shocked curiosity reigning supreme there.

"You would do that?" he asked after a moment spent staring incredulously at her. "For me?"

"Yes," she answered him without hesitation. "But not just for you. For me, too." At the questioning look he gave her, she explained, "You're not alone in this, Starscream. It's been much worse for you, but now that the new ones are gone and you're right here and I can see you and talk to you...it's getting worse for me, too. Very quickly."

"Oh," he breathed, blinking at her. Almost as if he was experimenting, he reached tentatively toward her and ran a hand lightly down her upper arm, barely making contact.

At the contact, Swoop gasped. His touch, light as it was, hesitant as it was, sent shocks firing through her. They tingled pleasantly along sensory pathways throughout her body, and she shuddered in their grip.

"I thought it was just me," Starscream was saying, his voice low as he watched her react to what he was doing to her.

Swoop snorted shakily and snarked, "Yes, because I have this lifelong habit of randomly making out with you _in front of my brothers_ and then have a shouting match with _Prowl_ when he pulls me away from you."

Starscream blinked at that, as if he'd forgotten that incident. Maybe he had. "Oh," he eventually said. "Right."

"But it was mostly you, before," she added, and now her voice was shuddering because he continued to run his hand lightly up and down her arm, and the sensations were maddening. She found herself fighting a strong urge to leap onto him and do wicked and naughty things to him, with him. "When I still had the new sparks, I mean. But now…"

"Now?" he asked, his tone almost teasing.

"Now," Swoop said, lowering her voice further, leaning into him in order to growl in his face, "I want you. And I know that you want me."

Starscream blinked at her for a few lingering seconds, surprised by her bluntness, but he recovered quickly enough.

"Well, when you put it _that_ way…" he said, just before closing the small distance between their faces in order to kiss her. After a moment, he pulled away a little and teased, "Maybe you ought to call in your brothers."

"Shut up," Swoop growled, smacking his shoulder none-too-gently.

"Prowl, then?" Starscream couldn't resist teasing. "We could shout at him together. Actually, that might be fun, now that I think about it. Two on one, maybe I'd win for once."

"Shut. _Up_!" Swoop growled more insistently, and to make sure that he obeyed, she reinitiated the kiss he'd started and quickly deepened it. Apparently, the tactic worked.

Some part of her knew that they shouldn't be doing this, knew that she needed to put a stop to this, but it was very, very difficult to pull away from him because she didn't _want_ to put a stop to what was happening, at all. Instead, she melted fully against Starscream, put aside rational thought as if flipping an off-switch, and just…felt. Felt his lips against hers. Felt the warmth of his body against hers, strange and deliciously familiar at the same time. Felt his arms closing possessively around her, holding her tightly against him. Felt curious fingers begin to explore her back, her wings. She had him at a disadvantage; she had a new body, he didn't. Swoop dug her fingers into his chest as she broke the kiss with a groan in order to nibble at his lips, his jaw line. She heard him gasp and growl at that, felt her own control slipping away inch by inch as desire rose, pure scalding lust surfacing with breathtaking swiftness…

…And then she pulled away from him with a frustrated snarl, scrambled off the berth, and backed away until she'd backed herself into a wall. Starscream didn't pursue her, perhaps only because he couldn't. He stayed on the berth, panting just as she was, watching her hungrily.

"Not yet," she managed to say to him, panting out the words, her voice a low and near-feral growl. "Have to reverse whatever Ratchet's done…or else it might not work."

Starscream scowled at her, every bit as frustrated as she was, but he nodded his understanding all the same.

"Make it quick," he advised after he took a moment to collect himself. "I don't know how much longer I can--"

"Oh, yes," she interrupted him and then, before she decided to do something crazy like throw caution to the wind and have him right there and then, she spun toward the door and left. There were preparations to make, not the least of which was talking to Ratchet about her plan. She could already feel her audios burning, anticipating his reaction to what she wanted, needed, to do. What she was _going_ to do, no matter what he had to say on the subject. The thought distracted her from the raging desire that was burning through her, at least for the moment.

Soon, she knew, nothing on Earth or anywhere else would be able to distract her, much less to deter her.


	14. Revelation

Swoop had anticipated a long and drawn-out war of words with Ratchet. She had thought that there would be outrage and shouting and possibly a few death threats leveled at a certain Seeker and perhaps even at herself. But in the end, Ratchet had surprised her. After poring over the research that she'd done and the results of the tests and simulations that she'd run, factoring in his own work that he'd independently done, and after contemplating the situation on his own, Ratchet had reached the very same conclusion that Swoop had reached, much as he didn't at all like the conclusion. Swoop learned as they'd spoken, calmly and rationally, that he had even thought of speaking to her about the very same idea that she was bringing to him. He just hadn't yet worked up the courage to broach the subject by the time that she'd shown up in his office to talk to him.

To make things easier for Swoop, given her own rapidly deteriorating condition, Ratchet had quietly arranged things, speaking with Optimus Prime and, more dauntingly, with Wheeljack about the situation. He had even volunteered the use of his quarters for the occasion. Swoop's were too otherwise populated with large and overprotective siblings, the medbay wasn't an appropriate environment for such a thing, being rather too public, and there were no otherwise unoccupied quarters available. When she'd halfheartedly protested, Ratchet had pointedly assured Swoop that he was quite happy to bunk with Wheeljack for however long it took. Meaning, Swoop suspected, that he was volunteering for the perilous duty of distracting Wheeljack from what she was doing, and that kind of distraction would possibly involve sitting on Wheeljack. Or perhaps even being more creative than that. Although he understood things a little better since they'd had their talk, Wheeljack still didn't at all share the level of understanding that Swoop had been surprised to discover that she shared with Ratchet.

It was a bit unsettling to be heading to Ratchet's quarters in order to accomplish the particular task at hand, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and beggars she and Starscream most certainly were. It had taken two days for the effects of Ratchet's delaying-tactic treatment to wear off on Starscream, but once it had, it was clear that the other "treatment" couldn't be delayed, not for him. He was a caged and feral animal, out of control, complete with an instinct-driven potential to be dangerous to himself and others because of it.

Swoop was utterly amazed that he'd been able to hold out as long as he had, for weeks, almost two months. She had no idea how he'd managed it. It had been less than a week since she'd started to feel the imprint's effects again, and she already felt ready to start climbing walls and to hurt people who got between Starscream and herself. Even though it was likely that the rapidity of the onset of the imprint's effect on her was merely a reflection of Starscream's simmering and long-term urgency, she still had to admire his restraint again. Warriors were supposed to have a high degree of self-control, but that wasn't something that Starscream was generally known for. But in that, too, she had underestimated him. 

Now, as she headed toward Ratchet's quarters, where Starscream awaited her, Swoop was trying to keep to a walk, trying to appear dignified in her decidedly undignified state, trying not to run frantically to him. Her body was feverishly heated and already given to shivering. Her breath came in short pants, and there were occasional growls mixed in, too, and there was a clawing, itching feeling all over that made her want to leap entirely out of her own body in order to escape it. And she could feel Starscream, could feel the echoed want in him, so very strong, stronger in him than in her due to the circumstances that had led them to this place, to the situation that they mutually faced.

She remembered this situation well, indeed. The only difference was that this time her body wasn't changing and in deep discomfort that often leapt across the threshold into intense pain because of it. Nor was her spark desperately hungry for energy because she wasn't in cycle this time but merely echoing Starscream's need. This time, for her, there was no pain, no discomfort, no fear of what was happening to her and absolutely no fear of what was going to happen very soon. There was just the want. Scorching, undeniable, irresistible _want_. But she didn't have long to wait now, as she turned down the corridor on which Ratchet's quarters were situated.

Swoop unlocked the door to Ratchet's quarters, slipped quickly inside, and then turned to lock the door again so that they wouldn't be disturbed. And then she turned to face Starscream, finding him huddled in a corner. He stared at her hungrily, his eyes dimmed to a blood-red crimson and glittering dangerously, but he was obviously uncertain, as well. It puzzled Swoop for a moment until she realized that he was likely trying to decide if she was really there or if she was merely something that his fevered imagination had conjured up to torment him, as it had done, so he'd told her, over and over during the past couple of months.

It occurred to Swoop that their positions were somewhat reversed from the last time they'd had this sort of encounter. Then, she'd been the one barely holding herself together, and he'd arrived and approached her in a somewhat more composed state, although that composure had rapidly abandoned him. The difference was that this time, neither of them wanted to fight what was going to happen between them. This time, Swoop wanted nothing more than to leap on Starscream, and—

But Starscream leaped on Swoop first, with a feral growl that appealed to a primal part of Swoop that she normally kept tightly locked away. She let out a startled yelp, and in the next nanosecond she found herself lifted as if she weighed nothing and then crushed up against the wall behind her. The impact wasn't gentle, and it thrummed and rattled uncomfortably through her body, particularly through her more-delicate wings. Nor was _he_ gentle, immediately setting to nuzzling, then nibbling, and then biting along her jaw line and down into the juncture of her neck and her shoulder, feverishly betting that those locations were just as sensitive on her new body as they had been on her old one. Judging from the sounds that Swoop made in response, his bet had paid off. Her soft moans were very quickly devolving into the needful, animal snarls that had sent shivers racing through him before. Now, they were doing so again.

Unlike their previous encounter, no words were exchanged between them because none were needed. There were only sensations and the wordless sounds uttered in reaction to them, sounds that quickly increased in volume and urgency and, on Swoop's part, animalism. Unlike their previous encounter, there was no hesitation on either side, and no need to move slowly or to be cautious or gentle in order to avoid spooking each other. Swoop's last coherent, rational thought was that Starscream, in his current state wouldn't last long at all…and neither, she realized with something like chagrin, would she. After that, she wasn't thinking anymore.

Their mouths, busy against each other for long minutes, mutually exploring and tasting and teasing, finally came together in a jarring, brutal, bruising kiss that didn't end for a long, long time. It merely shifted nuances on occasion, alternating between exploring and biting. Swoop wrapped her legs tightly around Starscream for balance and leverage, using them to pull him to her and then crush him against her as closely as possible, freeing him from having to support her weight with his hands. He immediately put his hands to far better use, setting them to roam all over Swoop's body, stroking and caressing and occasionally digging boldly into armor seams, meticulously exploring each of her new curves and angles. Starscream broke the long, biting kiss then, nuzzling insistently into the side of Swoop's neck, alternating between biting down into it and exploring it with his tongue, just as he was exploring other parts of her with his hands, wringing sensation from Swoop such that she suddenly forgot why it was necessary to move as opposed to staying right where she was forever and ever, drowning in sensation, in him, as she listened to the grunts and snarls and low, guttural growls that she knew, distantly, that she was making but that she hardly recognized as her own

After long and blissful moments, it dimly occurred to Swoop that she should be reciprocating in some manner, and with a mighty effort she willed herself to move, leaning forward slightly so that she could drape her arms over Starscream's shoulders. She toyed with the juncture of his wings and his back, the most sensitive area of his body that she knew of, scratching and digging into the area and then palliating the rough treatment with more soothing caresses before going back to scratching and digging. At the same time, she craned her head down a bit so that she could slowly and meticulously trace with her tongue the vents along the side of his head that she could reach, moaning and breathing heavily into them as she did so.

In response to her combined assault, Starscream let out a strangled groan. She'd never before done both of those things to him at the same time. No one ever had. The sensations that her efforts wrought, combined with the soft, continuous snarling that she was emitting from somewhere deep down in her chest, were too much. As sensation cascaded through him, Starscream let out an almost-distressed cry as his knees buckled suddenly, sending them both to the floor in an ungraceful tangle of limbs and wings. Swoop was not displeased when she found herself on top of Starscream in the aftermath. Growling ferally, she took quick advantage of the situation and straddled Starscream, pinning his arms to the floor beneath him.

Starscream knew, distantly, that he could throw her off if he wanted to, but he didn't want to throw her off, didn't want to move even a centimeter, certainly not once her mouth began to work feverishly against him. Not once she'd established with medical precision multiple mutual interface connections between them without him even realizing what she was doing until sensation began to cycle across the connections she'd made. Not once she'd then mindlessly torn a sizeable hole down the front of his shoulder and onto his chest with her teeth, too large a gash for self-repair systems to fix in anything like a timely manner. It hurt like hell and he cried out at the pain, but the sensations almost immediately mutated into a sharp pleasure, and her tongue crept its way into the gash, teasing the little shorted circuits that she'd created. Half-pained/half-pleasured surges tingled through Starscream, and he moaned in response. The sensations crashed into Swoop and she squeal-screeched in approval, redoubling her efforts. She let go of his arms then and raked her fingers down his chest, his canopy. The protesting squeal of metal against metal did not deter her as she scratched harshly against flat armor planes and dug into seams, knowing exactly where his most sensitive areas were and exploiting them mercilessly, such that Starscream soon found himself moaning pitifully and squirming helplessly beneath her, and the echoes of his pleasure were roiling through her, pushing her ever closer to the precipice.

Dimly realizing that his arms were free, that she'd had to let go of him to establish the interface connections and he'd not even noticed, Starscream could retaliate. He wrapped his arms around her and dug his fingers into her back and then soon shifted his attention to her wings, tracing their new, intricate fold seams gently at first and then, abandoning caution, curiously digging into them. In response, Swoop's entire wing involuntarily heaved in a mighty twitch, that was hard enough to create a soft _fwoof_ of displaced air, and she unleashed a guttural howl at the unexpected sensation. The sound -- Primus, he loved her sex noises -- almost pushed Starscream into overload, all by itself. Almost. It was the resulting flood of sensation that cascaded from Swoop to Starscream and then cycled between them, amplified by the connections, that sent them _both_ crashing over the edge, simultaneously, so that neither could say who had climaxed first. Neither really cared. What was important was that it was intense, overwhelmingly so, and it knocked both of them offline.

When Starscream came to he knew not how long later, it was to the sensation of Swoop tending with infinite care to the ugly gash that she had created in his shoulder. She was kneeling next to him, bent over him, carefully cleaning and then patching the still-sparking gash to protect it from any foreign particles because Earth's omnipresent dirt and dust could be surprisingly detrimental to their inner workings. Keeping himself still, Starscream surreptitiously watched her work, taking in the focused expression on her face, the way that her brow furrowed as she concentrated on what she was doing. She was biting down into her lower lip, probably unconsciously, as she worked, and Starscream found it strangely endearing. And he appreciated her efficient gentleness, the rock-steady carefulness of her fingers and the self-confident grace she displayed as she worked. She caused no pain whatsoever as she repaired the damage that she'd caused. He knew, intellectually, that she was a medic. The red crosses on the outsides of her shoulders marked her as such, and she wouldn't have them if she hadn't earned them, and she'd had then for about ten years now. Beyond that, he knew that she'd repaired him after his arrival at Autobot Headquarters. Ratchet had told him that when he'd tried to awkwardly thank Ratchet for doing so. Still, it hadn't quite sunk in with Starscream that Swoop was, indeed, a competent medic in her own right. Propaganda amongst his faction had it that the Dinobots were moronic, sparkless drones. He knew now, of course, that this was not true, at least not true of Swoop, and it if wasn't true of her, it probably wasn't true of her brothers, either. Swoop certainly had a spark -- a very royal one -- and she also had a keen and sarcastic wit that he very much appreciated. Still, that knowledge hadn't really sunk in. Until now. 

She wasn't what he expected, on many levels.

When Swoop finished and noticed that Starscream had emerged from his stupor, she gave him a shamefaced look and whispered a deeply remorseful, "I'm so sorry, Starscream. I can't believe I did that."

Starscream flinched as he experimentally moved the damaged shoulder, but he smiled at the same time.

"Don't be sorry, Swoop," he said quietly, his voice shaking and scratching around the words. He pushed himself weakly up into a sitting position, grimacing at the twinge of pain in his chest as his movements pulled at Swoop's patch job. Shifting to lean back against the wall, he added, "It was _so_ worth it. That was…wow."

"Mmmm," she murmured in agreement as she put aside the tools and medical supplies. "It was wow," she added as she leaned into him with a naughty smile and began to pepper little apologetic kisses around the perimeter of the patched gash. "And quick," she murmured between pecks. "But very…intense."

Her kisses slowly began to migrate away from his shoulder then, began to morph into something less than soothing and closer to inflaming. Starscream closed his eyes, leaning limply back against the wall, simply enjoying her ministrations. Eventually, Swoop slithered her way into his lap, straddling him and then settling herself comfortably as her mouth found his. The kiss was slow this time, gentle, even tender now that desperation had eased for both of them. Starscream wrapped his arms around her waist, ignoring the protest from his shoulder at the movement, pulling her closer to him but gently so, so that she could escape if he spooked her. But she only snuggled even closer into him, deepening the kiss as she did so, her tongue finding and teasing his. Starscream found himself murmuring appreciatively, and Swoop smiled against him, her hands moving to run slowly down his chest, fingers tickling and teasing along the edges of his canopy.

It was then, as she toyed with the catches that secured his canopy, that Starscream realized that in order to "repeat the experiment," as it were, he would need to give her another infusion of spark energy. She wasn't in cycle at the moment, so the extra energy would harmlessly dissipate through her systems, but it was likely to be exactly what was required to sever the imprint between them, if it could be severed at all. That was their purpose here, after all, pleasurable though it was otherwise. And Starscream would be able to give Swoop the infusion, certainly. The now-familiar pain-pressure that was building in his spark told him so. Still, something was nagging at him, buzzing frantically in the back of his mind. He mentally poked at whatever it was, warily, and then he recognized it: It was empathy, and it was disturbing.

Meanwhile, Swoop had apparently reached the same conclusion that Starscream had reached. Never breaking the passionate but still-gentle kiss between them, she already had his canopy opened, his spark chamber exposed, and she was working on her own. Starscream broke the kiss between them then, suddenly grabbing her hands to still them. She frowned at him curiously, her brow furrowed, as he studied her face apprehensively.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked quietly.

"Sure that it will work, you mean?" she asked in return, confused by his question and his apparent uncertainty.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, I know that there are no guarantees. I mean, are you sure that we should do it at all?"

"If we don't then I doubt that the imprint will break," Swoop answered reasonably, her brow furrowing more deeply. "That's what we want. Isn't it?" she added, and Starscream could have sworn that there was a measure of hesitation in her voice.

The answer that immediately and irrationally leaped to Starscream's mind was a loud and fervent "No!" but he answered, quietly, "Yes."

"Well, then…?" Swoop prompted, gently and meaningfully pulling her hands out of his grasp. She returned to her task then, and as the mellow golden light from her spark washed over him, Starscream voiced his real concern.

"I don't want to hurt you," he confessed quietly, quickly, before he thought the better of it.

Swoop stopped what she was doing and stared at him, surprised and speechless for a moment because of it.

"I know what it feels like, now," Starscream explained while she stared at him. "And I don't want you to have to go through that. Not for me."

Swoop smiled at him then, genuinely touched. She caressed his face tenderly, appreciatively, as she gently said, "It isn't just for you, Starscream. Remember? And I'm going to have to go through an infusion thousands of times in my life. An extra one isn't going to make much of a difference." She leaned into him then, kissed him quickly but tenderly, to forestall any further protests because kissing him was a good way to shut him up. Then she rested her forehead against his and added softly, "It's shockingly nice of you to be concerned, but it's all right. Really."

Starscream nodded, not entirely convinced, but resigned to his task nevertheless. Swoop settled herself comfortably in his lap, facing him, equally resigned and trying not to show the apprehension that she felt, especially after Starscream's curious confession. She had almost taken him up on his offer, out of pure self-interest, not really wanting to experience the pain that she knew that she was about to suffer. But she was convinced that if the imprint between them could be broken at all, then an infusion would be the thing that would accomplish the severance, and this strengthened her resolve to follow through with the original plan. She signaled her readiness with a nod at Starscream. He reached out to her, and unexpectedly pulled her closer to him, wrapping one arm around her waist.

"Hold on to me," he said to her seriously. "If you need to."

Swoop nodded, smiling her appreciation of the offer, as Starscream whispered an advance apology and then made the connection between their spark chambers.

This time, Swoop had actual practical experience rather than just a clinical idea of what to expect that had been gleaned from reading. Because of that, the pain didn't take her quite so much by surprise and didn't seem quite as bad, but it was still nothing less than excruciating. She held tightly to Starscream as the pain assaulted her, buffeted her. Her arms clenched tightly and reflexively around him, fingers digging roughly into him, probably hurting him, but if so he didn't offer a complaint, just held her and made comforting noises at her. And when the energy transfer was completed and the pain finally subsided, what seemed to Swoop to be hours later, she sagged against Starscream as if half of her structure had melted. She was panting , trembling violently, and whimpering helplessly.

Sympathetically, and ever so gently, Starscream soothed her just as he had when they'd done this before, except that this time he held her close as he ran his hands over her body in gentle caresses and continued to murmur soothing words and comforting sounds at her, even laying a few soft kisses along her head crest. She stayed melted against him, wordlessly appreciating the comfort.

It seemed to Starscream that it took a long time for Swoop to recover, longer than it had before, but a more rational part of him realized that this was likely because of the empathy that he was feeling now, now that he knew first-hand the level of pain that she had just experienced. Eventually, Swoop raised her head from where it had come to rest against the front of his undamaged shoulder. Sitting back a little, but still nestled comfortably across his lap, she regarded him blearily, blinking unsteadily.

"Are you all right?" Starscream asked her.

Swoop nodded absently and answered, "I will be."

"I'm sorry," he said.

She smiled faintly and gently prodded his patched shoulder.

"Well, we're even now," she said lightly.

Starscream snorted and answered, "That was nothing."

"Not to me," Swoop replied seriously.

And then she was leaning into him, kissing him. Starscream at first held her as if he was afraid that she would break in the aftermath of the infusion, but he soon realized what she wanted, remembering what he had done before to make up for the pain that she had experienced from that initial infusion.  
Starscream was all too happy to repeat that "treatment," hoping that it would make him forget this time as much as it made her forget.

******

"You are awfully cuddly, you know," Starscream felt compelled to point out to Swoop when they had once again regained their senses, his voice ragged.

Swoop was working at snuggling into him as closely as she could manage. She couldn't tell if he approved of her cuddliness or was disgusted by it, but he didn't move, so Swoop assumed that approval at least outweighed disgust for the moment. Or maybe it was just that he was too worn out to move. Either worked.

"I'm cold," Swoop grumpily informed him, nuzzling her face into his shoulder, the one that she hadn't damaged.

Starscream made a disbelieving noise.

"How can you possibly be cold after _that_?" he demanded to know.

Raising her head, Swoop looked up into his face.

"Remember back when all of this started?" she asked. "When you were trying to figure out the secrets of my wondrous armor?"

Starscream frowned deeply at the question, thinking that she was rather bizarrely changing the subject.

"Yes?" he answered, almost hesitantly, as if to humor the suddenly crazy person.

"Well, I'll let you in on some of its deepest, darkest secrets," Swoop grumbled. "It's _really_ light. It's _really_ strong. And it's _way_ too damned efficient at dissipating heat. The hotter I get, the colder I am a few minutes later. And there is nothing that I hate more than being cold."

"Really?" Starscream asked archly. " _Nothing_ you hate more?"

"Nothing," Swoop confirmed, her tone almost vicious. "Surprise, Starscream, you're not at the top of the list of things I hate."

He snorted at that.

"Well, we'll have to see what we can do about that, then," he said lightly. "And really, I guess I should be feeling flattered now."

Swoop ceased her squirming long enough to aim a quizzical look at his face.

"What?" she asked, not following him. "Why? Because I don't hate you as much as you thought?"

"No," Starscream answered with a wicked grin. "I should be flattered because, considering that you are currently doing your level best to climb _inside_ my armor with me, I can only conclude that I must have made you _really_ hot."

Swoop glared at him and then she sighed in surrender, muttering, "Yes, well…Don't let it go to your pretty little head."

"Too late!" Starscream quipped. And then, as Swoop snorted exasperatedly and resumed her squirming, he sighed in annoyance and sat up, leaning back against the wall that was still behind them.

"Hey!" Swoop protested indignantly as he moved.

Further feeble protests issued from Swoop as Starscream yanked insistently at her, pulling her upright as well. And then he tucked her against himself, her back to his front, and wrapped both of his arms and both of his legs around her. Swoop abruptly stopped protesting, instead murmuring in appreciation and snuggling in to revel in the wrap-around warmth that he was offering to her. "S'nice," she murmured sleepily.

"Do you think it worked?" Starscream murmured at her drowsily a moment later.

"Don't know," Swoop answered, knowing exactly what he meant. "We'll need to run some scans…um, later."

And then, leaning comfortably back against Starscream, Swoop promptly passed out. And Starscream wasn't far behind her.

******

"I don't even know what that says," Swoop confessed with a languid sigh. It was hours later, after a long, slow, and extremely enjoyable Round Three, just for the hell of it.

They had managed to clumsily stumble their way to Ratchet's berth this time, which was infinitely more comfortable than either the floor of Autobot Headquarters or the floor of an equatorial rain forest. Now, Swoop was snuggled up against Starscream again, basking in his radiating warmth like a rattlesnake on a sun-warmed rock. They were half sitting up against the wall at the head of Ratchet's berth, and Swoop was watching as Starscream meditatively traced with one finger the golden symbols that spiraled down the field of lapis that was the top of her right forearm.

"If it says anything at all," Swoop added offhandedly. "If it isn't just random decoration or something, I mean."

Starscream looked at her, frowning quizzically, and his hand stilled.

"It isn't random decoration," he said quietly. He held her gaze levelly as he explained, "But I'm not surprised that you don't know what it says. I'm surprised that anyone here would know what it says, other than maybe Prowl, and I really can't imagine him having any artistic input. Which is why I can't figure out how—"

"Snarl knows what it says," Swoop informed Starscream. At the deeply questioning look that Starscream gave her, she shrugged and answered, "Snarl has a thing for languages. I'm sure he told Sludge what to write."

Starscream grunted noncommittally at that, but Swoop could tell that he was surprised. Perhaps impressed, even, just as he had been when she'd told him that it was Sludge who had designed the body that she was now wearing.

"This is a very old warrior dialect," Starscream informed her after a moment's silence. "I don't know how it was pronounced, so I can't speak it, but I can read it."

Swoop waited for him to do so, appreciating the low, thoughtful quietness of his voice. It made her wonder if his characteristic nasal screech was a mere affectation or if it was only something that surfaced when he was stressed. At the moment, he was anything but stressed, his body warm and completely relaxed alongside and against hers.

"So?" she prompted after the silence between them lengthened to a point beyond her comfort level. Plus, she was intensely curious now. "What does it say?"

Starscream hesitated. For a moment, he went back to distractedly tracing the inlaid glyphs on her arm, and Swoop was forced to nudge him with a knee to get his attention again. When she did, he met her gaze only reluctantly and almost shyly.

"It says," he announced quietly, "'She who will restore.'" Then, reaching to grab her other arm, he laid it alongside its twin, gently ran his fingers down the slightly different column of glyphs, and added, "And this one says, 'She who will…redeem.'"

The pause before the last word was significant, and Starscream looked up again to meet Swoop's gaze, his expression deadly serious. Impulsively, she reached out and stroked his cheek, and he thoughtlessly leaned into the caress.

"Is that what you want, Starscream?" Swoop asked quietly of him, stroking a thumb gently over the seam of his cheek. Her narrowed, searching gaze did not stray from his. "To be redeemed?"

"Maybe," he said quietly, after a moment's thought. But then, suddenly and determinedly, he was moving, disentangling himself from Swoop and getting up off of the berth, putting some buffering distance between them. Swoop shivered, immediately missing the warmth of him against her and, sitting up farther, she drew her knees into her chest, trying to hold in warmth as she watched Starscream pace a few laps of the room. "Then again," he added pointedly, halting his pacing and turning to face her, "maybe I don't think that I need to be. I thought that we were doing the _right_ thing."

Swoop blinked at him, not following for a moment, but then she realized what he was talking about.

"Mmmm," she murmured with a nod. Then she added with biting sarcasm, "Because mass murder can't possibly be wrong."

Starscream scowled at that, his jaw clenching and his eyes narrowing.

"Do you have _any_ idea we suffered because of her? What the populations of neighboring systems suffered?" he asked, quietly angry.

Swoop raised her chin at him, defiantly.

"Yes," she said honestly, bluntly. "Yes, I do. What she did to the warriors and…and to many others was wrong, all of it, and I won't defend any of it. But what you did, what all of you did… That was wrong, too, and if I could remember any of it or if I had any sort of real emotional attachment at all, and if I didn't actually agree that _something_ needed to be done about her, I'd probably hate you for it. But even if she…my mother…had been the worst monster in the history of the universe, you destroyed _children_ , Starscream. Innocents. An _infant_."

Starscream gave her a penetrating look at that, his eyes suddenly narrowed more in thoughtfulness than in anger. He seemed to deliberate about something for a noticeable stretch of time, his head tilted slightly to one side as he regarded Swoop, as she stared back at him in quiet outrage that was fueled more by a lack of understanding than by moral insult. Then he sighed, his shoulders slumping as he moved to perch on the berth, sitting on the very edge of it, facing Swoop but not touching her, not quite.

"That wasn't supposed to happen, you know. At least, not to you," he clarified quietly. He gave her an intense look that clearly communicated that he was trying to tell her something very important, but she had no clue what it was. "Eclipse wasn't… _You_ weren't a target," Starscream clarified further when Swoop said nothing.

"Why the hell not?" Swoop asked, blinking at him, surprise making her both bold and frank. "Everyone else was!"

" _Because_ ," Starscream answered quietly, "the plan wasn't to doom our entire species. We were angry, enraged to the point of…of regicide, yes. And maybe you're right that we didn't go about things in the best way possible. But whatever the case, we were not _stupid_."

Swoop frowned and opened her mouth to say something, but Starscream hurriedly spoke over her.

"You were an infant, as you said," he explained, his voice matter-of-fact. "The entire Uprising was deliberately planned to happen shortly after your birth, and whether or not it happened at all, at least at that particular time, entirely depended upon whether or not you were female."

Swoop could only blink at him for a long moment, stupidly. And then she declared, very intelligently, "I don't understand."

Starscream sighed.

"Megatron knew that he would need a…replacement for your mother, but he also knew that it couldn't be any of your sisters and certainly not any of your mother's female relatives. Your sisters were all already too old, would understand and remember everything that had happened, and he knew that if he let any of them live, they would be nothing but trouble, uncooperative trouble, and he couldn't risk that. But then when your mother announced that she was carrying a child…"

"An infant," Swoop said as his voice trailed off, as she began to comprehend, "wouldn't remember anything. And she could be controlled. She would only know what she was told and would only learn what she was allowed to learn. And if she was the only surviving female," Swoop further realized, "then it was guaranteed that she would awaken when…"

"Yes," Starscream answered quietly as Swoop's voice trailed off. "Exactly so. So if you had been male, we would have waited until the next time. But you were female. A blank, infant slate for Megatron to write on as he saw fit as you matured. And then, when you were fully mature, he could…use you…as he saw fit, too."

Swoop was silent for a long, long time after that, absorbing what Starscream had said, trying to decide whether or not to believe him. It did make sense, after all. One of the mysteries that surrounded the Uprising was the question of why Megatron had been willing to doom his own species' entire future for the sake of his cause. It seemed nonsensical and, for the most part, he was written off as insane for doing so, painted as concerned only about his own power, sparing not a thought for the future. But Swoop now realized that he hadn't been insane and that he had had a viable plan for the future, horrible as that future might have been for her. Someone had merely foiled that plan, and Megatron had been muddling through ever since. It explained much.

"But in the end," Starscream finally, quietly said, as if he'd become uncomfortable with the silence, "you suffered a much better fate, Swoop. Consequences for our species aside, I should think that even death would have been preferable to becoming…What's the term? A 'brood mare?' But you didn't die. Someone just went to lengths to make it look like you did."

"Who?" Swoop asked immediately, almost reflexively.

"I don't know," Starscream answered. "Not for certain, at any rate. But I always thought that you were dead, and so I thought that _that_ person was the insane one," he continued quietly. "That that was the person who doomed us, not Megatron."

"But?" Swoop prompted after he'd been quiet for a while, since the unspoken "but" hanging in his voice was glaringly obvious.

"But I was wrong," Starscream confessed quietly, bitterly, and Swoop knew that those particular words were very difficult for him to utter. He stared down at her arm as he added, "Instead he arranged it such that one day, some time in the future, you could indeed become…" He paused, reached out to run a hand down Swoop's forearm, and whispered, "'She who will restore.'"

Swoop caught his gaze for a moment, searchingly now.

"You _do_ know who it was," she decided. "Tell me," she demanded.

"I have only suspicions," Starscream answered guardedly and perhaps bitterly. "I doubt that I will be allowed the opportunity to confirm them."

"I'll confirm them for you," Swoop insisted flatly. "Tell me."

Starscream's eyes narrowed as he stared at her for long moments, obviously deliberating. Then: "Think of the warriors who are amongst the Autobots now," he said, leaning toward Swoop conspiratorially. "Consider only those who were alive and present on Cybertron at the time of the Uprising. Now, from amongst those few, consider who would be the most likely to recognize and capitalize on something so small but that would potentially have such an utterly devastating effect on Megatron and his plan."

"Prowl," Swoop blurted out, without even a second of hesitation.

"There's my clever girl," Starscream said, leaning even closer toward her so that he could tap the end of her nose with one finger, as one might a child. Swoop glared at him for the patronizing gesture as he continued, "I always suspected that he had done _something_ at the time. He was…unhappy…with Megatron, even then. But I never confronted him about it because I wasn't sure what, if anything, he'd done, and even if I _had_ been sure, there was no evidence of anything. And without evidence, Megatron would have dismissed anything that I had to say, _especially_ if it was something about Prowl. But then when he left us, defected to Optimus Prime…"

"But Prowl wouldn't know how to remove someone's spark like that," Swoop pointed out, interrupting. "Would he?" she added uncertainly when it occurred to her that she had no idea what Prowl might or might not know how to do. He was a complete enigma to her and always had been. He was so aloof and always so forbidding that she habitually maintained a wide and wary distance from him, when it was possible to do so. Starscream knew him far better than she did, better than any of the Autobots did, ironically enough.

"No," Starscream confirmed meanwhile. "No, he wouldn't. At least not that I know of. But that doesn't matter because it would have been easy enough to find and convince an accomplice who did know how to do that, particularly someone whom he knew wasn't _really_ …"

Swoop watched Starscream's face curiously as his voice trailed off, but it was soon obvious that he wasn't going to finish his thought aloud. As he settled into a thoughtful silence, Swoop took to wondering if she would ever reach a point when nothing would surprise her, when she would know and understand everything about herself. It didn't seem possible because every time she thought she understood even just a small aspect of herself, another bomb fell and ripped everything apart again.

"Just when I think things can't possibly get any weirder," she muttered dispiritedly as she slumped against the wall behind her, folding her arms over her chest.

"Oh, there's all manner of weird here," Starscream gravely agreed. "You're a queen. I'm practically immortal and possibly eternally…uh, connected to you. And Prowl…Prowl might just be Jesus in disguise."

"What?" Swoop sputtered, laughing despite herself.

"Well, he might be your personal savior, anyway," Starscream asserted with a careless shrug.

Swoop just stared at him for a long, long moment after that.

"You're crazy," she decided.

"You have _no_ idea," Starscream agreed, very seriously. "And it's a damned good thing for you that I am," he added, equally seriously, as his gaze held hers.

"Oh really?" she asked, blinking at him, nonplussed. "How so?"

"Because I had orders to kill you," he said, with a shrug that didn't entirely succeed at being flippantly casual. "And _because_ I'm crazy, I didn't. Lucky you."

Swoop was surprised that he was bringing up that particular subject. Surprised and curious. She realized that it was probably a diversion, an attempt to shift the conversation away from a far more uncomfortable topic. And he'd chosen a good gambit, too, because it was a subject that had Swoop dying of curiosity. He didn't seem inclined to elaborate, though, so:

"Why _did_ you decide not to kill me, Starscream?" she asked of him directly. She didn't expect Starscream to answer her at all, much less honestly, but she still felt compelled to ask it of him. True to form, Starscream just continued to regard her steadily, an enigmatic half smile on his dark face. Once a few moments had passed and Swoop realized that he wasn't going to answer her question, she added, only half-teasingly, "Don't tell me you were feeling reverent."

Starscream actually looked thoughtful as he considered that, and for a moment Swoop wondered if she'd hit the mark, all unintentionally. But then he was suddenly and unexpectedly moving quickly to straddle her, his greater weight effectively pinning her down, and shortly after that their faces were mere centimeters apart. His gaze was burning as it held hers insistently. She couldn't look away if she tried.

And then Starscream asked, "And what if I said that I was, my queen?"

The question was asked in quiet and perfect and surprising earnest, perhaps even in deference. It was certainly the first time that Starscream, that _anyone_ , had used the traditional honorific, but Swoop couldn't tell whether it was sarcastic or genuine.

And impulsively, in lieu of answering him, Swoop closed the minute distance between them, kissing him deeply and thoroughly, snaking her arms around his neck in order to pull him closer against her. When they came up for air, long minutes later, she answered breathlessly, "I wouldn't believe you."

"Mmmm," Starscream murmured in return, and then he kissed her. When _that_ kiss came to its eventual and natural conclusion, more long moments later, he asked, "You don't think you're worthy of reverence?"

"Oh, I'm worthy," Swoop answered with an impudent grin. "I just don't think that _you're_ capable."

"Is that so?" Starscream asked indignantly, narrowing his eyes at her in such a way that they seemed to radiate a deeper crimson.

"It is," she answered him, nodding gravely.

"I'll have you know that I'm capable of many things that might surprise you," he insisted.

"Oh, really?" Swoop lazily replied, amused. She raised a hand in the scant distance between their bodies so that she could run one teasing finger lightly down the center of his canopy. She smirked at the involuntary shudder that the gesture wrung from him.

"Really," Starscream confirmed, regarding her seriously and in sudden challenge, his smoldering crimson gaze locked with her liquid, golden one.

"Prove it, then," she growled, all sudden intensity herself as she pulled him fully against her, quickly enough that he had no time to react or resist, even going so far as to wrap a leg around him to prevent his escape. "Revere me, warrior," she commanded in a breathy and urgently demanding whisper right against his audio.

And Starscream proceeded to do exactly as she'd commanded.


	15. Retrospect

Prowl's office door was always open. It wasn't that he was inviting visitors, so Swoop had always thought, but simply that he wanted to keep an eye on what was happening outside of his door. The thought was not entirely comforting. Steeling herself, firmly reminding herself that she had every right to talk to him – to question him, even – if she wanted to, Swoop cautiously poked her head into the room.

The humans had a name for Prowl's decorating style, such as it was. It was a name borrowed from a warrior culture of their own: Spartan. The description suited Prowl's office well. It contained little besides a simple desk housing a computer station, a set of shelves holding a neatly-arranged and organized array of datapads, and a few chairs. But as bare as it was, it somehow suited him. One warrior ideal was to need little. Prowl was a perfect reflection of that warrior ideal among many others.

He was at his desk, absorbed in whatever was displayed on the computer screen in front of him. For a moment, Swoop had second…third…fourth thoughts about speaking with him. His aloofness and reserve had always intimidated her, but she determinedly put that aside and rapped her knuckles lightly on the doorjamb to get his attention. Immediately, Prowl looked up, and almost as immediately his full attention crystallized on Swoop. Before he could say anything and before she could fifth-guess herself, Swoop determinedly asked, "Do you have a few minutes, Prowl?"

"For you," he answered smoothly after a blink of what might have been surprise, "I have hours. Please, come in," he added, and he gestured at one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. When Swoop had settled herself into it, he asked, "What may I do for you, Swoop?"

Swoop bit down on her lower lip, her fingers clenching reflexively around the arm of her chair. She'd wandered the corridors of Autobot Headquarters for a while before finally working her way to Prowl's office. She'd been rehearsing what she'd say to him, but once she was sitting and facing him, her scripted conversations evaporated, leaving her flying blind. Which was just as well. She'd always been better at thinking on the fly. 

Which, when she thought about it, made her pretty much the opposite of Prowl. Which perhaps was part of the reason that she and Prowl were at odds more often than not now. Prowl was all about anticipating and planning for every contingency, and he was the most controlled individual that Swoop had ever known. Until very recently, she'd never seen that control slip, not even for a moment, not even in the wake of a battle during which he'd been seriously injured. He was eerily stoic, able to hold perfectly coherent conversations even when sporting injuries that would have others either screaming in agony or already passed out from it. But recently there'd been some slipping, when it came to her. There'd been the conflict over Starscream's treatment and whether or not he'd be interrogated once she'd repaired him. Then there was that shouting match in the medbay after Starscream had awakened, which had been heated enough to trigger the emergence of the offspring sparks that she'd been carrying. Not to mention the way that Prowl had run hot and cold with her in general since the revelation of her status, by turns irritated and coolly deferential, often both in a single interaction. Swoop was never sure which Prowl she'd be facing at any given moment, and that was unsettling. 

Prowl obviously didn't know what to make of her, either, and it was no doubt unsettling _him_ , enough so to make him run hot and cold. She couldn't imagine that her moving up in the ranks so dramatically was something that he'd ever anticipated, much less planned for, any more than she herself had. Oddly, the thought that they might be equally unsettled calmed her. Understanding motivations helped her to deal with people, be it recalcitrant patients that she wanted to whack with a sledgehammer or tacticians that she occasionally wanted to strangle.

"I have two things," Swoop found herself saying. "One is a heads-up, the other a question."

Prowl gave her a polite acknowledging nod, and Swoop decided to get the easier issue out of the way first.

"As you may or may not know," she said levelly, "Starscream and I attempted to break the imprint between us several days ago."

"So I'd heard," Prowl answered neutrally.

"Our attempt appears to have been unsuccessful," Swoop reported matter-of-factly.

"I'm very sorry to hear that," Prowl murmured.

Swoop wasn't really sorry -- Not that she'd admit that to anyone, least of all Prowl -- so she shrugged as she said, "We knew there were no guarantees involved. And we'll all continue thinking about and looking for alternatives." Then she sighed as she added, "But it's very likely that future accommodations will need to be made because it could be a permanent condition. I've already reported this to Optimus Prime, and he said that I should tell you, so that you can inform the personnel who'll need to know."

Prowl sat back in his chair suddenly, and Swoop was surprised to see open dismay on his face.

"Passing the buck again," he murmured, not quite to himself.

Swoop smiled fractionally, despite herself.

"He calls it 'delegating,'" she said, and her tone almost managed to be light.

"Oh, I'm very aware of what he calls it," Prowl grimly remarked. He got up out of his chair then, began to pace the small confines of his office. "This is a potential security nightmare," he said, almost wearily.

"I know," Swoop answered. "But it isn't something that I have a choice about. Or _any_ control over. On the plus side, he's here, and from what he says, due to the circumstances of his departure, he's not likely to be welcomed back into the Decepticon fold. So, he's likely not going anywhere, either."

Prowl made a noncommittal noise and continued to pace.

"What is his status now?" he eventually asked.

"Right now," Swoop answered, "he's in the medbay. We've been constantly monitoring his spark's energy signature to see if it changes, but since it's been a couple days now and it's still matched to mine, we—"

"He should be moved to the brig," Prowl unexpectedly interrupted, his voice almost a growl.

Swoop frowned at that, surprised at the interruption but even more so by the obvious irritation in his voice. It seemed that it was a "running hot" kind of day, and Swoop heaved an inward sigh.

"I don't think that's necessary," she asserted levelly. "He's disarmed, has no access to any of our computers or sensitive systems, and is under constant guard. My brothers won't let him out of their sight. And aside from poking at _you_ ," she jabbed, "he's done nothing threatening to anyone since he's been here."

Ignoring the jab, Prowl spat, "Because he's been mostly incapacitated, either physically or…mentally. He should be done away with. Then you wouldn't have to worry about any imprint."

It wasn't in Prowl's nature to be facetious, and his suggestion angered Swoop, which she acknowledged wasn't that hard to do anymore. She rose from her chair then, too, and swung around to face him, unimpressed with the forbidding look he was giving her. She planted her fists on her hips, her shoulders thrown back, golden wings fully outspread, and she spat back at Prowl, "Just what _is_ it between you two?"

Her tone gave Prowl pause, and for a fleeting moment he saw not Swoop but her mother, the always-glittering Corona, whose quick temper and coloring both matched the intense blue-white of the giant star that Cybertron used to orbit. Swoop's temper was slower to ignite and her coloring was very different, warm and golden where her mother had been cold and silver-blue, but her stance was the same. The way that her fists tightened and loosened where they rested against her hips was the same. The way that she raised her chin at him was the same. The ramrod-straight posture was the same. The way that her eyes narrowed at him peevishly was the same. Even the voice was the same, particularly so now that Swoop was outraged. Corona hadn't been a flier so she hadn't had wings, but Swoop did, and that only served to make Swoop a more impressive figure than her mother had been even though she was smaller overall. The sum of all of it was disconcerting, and Prowl had to blink a few times before the apparition dissipated and it was Swoop standing there again.

But she was a very different Swoop now, and the changes were not merely physical. Unschooled and unprepared for her position as she was, she was just beginning to discover the depths of the power that she wielded, but it was already flowing out of her sometimes, mostly in quick flashes when she was angry. On those occasions, Prowl found himself in an odd position. She'd always been meek, particularly so for a Dinobot, content to spend her time mostly in the medbay. Most importantly, whenever they'd had cause to interact -- which wasn't often -- Prowl had always had authority over her. Now, whether or not she'd fully realized it, she had authority over him, over _all_ of them. And she was waiting for him to answer her question now, for she clearly expected an answer.

"Starscream and I is...a very long story," Prowl answered with a sigh. "Suffice it to say that to me, he is a triple offense. He is a liar, and a coward, and a traitor."

Swoop actually laughed at that and then she said, "Funny, he says the same thing about you." And then she clarified, "The traitor part, I mean."

Prowl narrowed his eyes at her in annoyance.

"I left Megatron," he said around a clenched jaw, "on _principle_. Starscream indulges in treachery for fun. Because it gives him a _thrill_. He has a silver tongue and far too much charisma, and he will say _exactly_ what you want to hear. He'll whisper the sweetest words you'll ever hear to you while he works on plans to stab you in the back. Which he _will_ do once he decides that it's to his advantage to do so."

Swoop frowned pensively at that. Prowl's words and the way that he said them spoke of personal experience, and that was information that she carefully filed away.

"Don't make the mistake of trusting anything that he says," Prowl was continuing, meanwhile. "Don't make the mistake of _ever_ trusting him, period. Lest you forget, he killed three of your siblings, I believe, and who knows how many other people during the Uprising. With no remorse whatsoever."

Silence reigned between them after that. Half of Swoop was reeling from the raw emotion Prowl had just expressed while the other half of her chewed on the last thing he'd said. Prowl, meanwhile, reined in his temper. Starscream, and talking about Starscream, was the one thing that could still make him lose control. Starscream was the one demon that Prowl hadn't managed to conquer yet.

"Mmmm," Swoop eventually responded, quietly, almost mildly. "And how many people did _you_ kill during the Uprising, Prowl? How much remorse do _you_ have?"

Prowl stared at her, blinking, not at all expecting such a response and not having an answer for her, not before she had already continued.

"How many people did…oh, Sunstreaker kill? Sunstreaker doesn't know the _meaning_ of the word remorse and is only with us, as I understand it, because he has some personal scores to settle with some warriors who sided with the Decepticons. Tell me," she continued relentlessly, "am I supposed to hate _all_ of the warriors who participated in the Uprising or only those who didn't have second thoughts about it _afterward_ , like _you_ did?" she spat. 

Prowl continued to just stare at her, so Swoop sarcastically exclaimed, "Hey, I have an idea! How about if I just hate _none_ of the warriors? Not you. Not Starscream. Not even _Megatron_. You've all got blood on your hands, and lots of it, so as far as I'm concerned none of you can claim the moral high ground. So how about if we just leave the past in the past and deal with the present instead?"

Prowl finally found his voice.

"That's…probably a wise course of action," he said quietly. "We're all perhaps fortunate that you have the freedom to think that way," he added pointedly.

"So do you, Prowl," she answered him with a tired sigh. "So does everyone else. Whether or not to hold on to grudges is a _choice_ ," she said. "Sure, it's easier for me to let go because I have no direct experience of the Uprising, but at some point, we're all going to have to make the choice about whether or not we're going to keep living in the past."

"True," Prowl agreed, settling himself to perch on the corner of his desk while studying Swoop measuringly and for an unsettlingly long time. Under his scrutiny, she had to fight the urge to take a few reflexive steps backward, and she succeeded, determinedly holding her ground. Eventually, Prowl added, "But all of that doesn't change the fact that Starscream…is Starscream."

"Because no one ever changes," Swoop asserted flatly.

"What's the saying?" Prowl responded. "'The leopard can't change his spots'?"

"He isn't a leopard," Swoop pointed out.

"But he's every bit as spotty," Prowl immediately countered. He cocked his head to one side and then thoughtfully asked of her, "Has he been telling you that he's changed, then? Has he been whispering sweet nothings in your ear?"

"Actually, no," Swoop answered calmly. "No sweet nothings, and he's made no such claims. He also hasn't told me anything that I want to hear, although he seems quite happy to tell me things that I don't want to hear," she added. " _And_ he's managed to totally miss not one but many perfect opportunities to stab me in the back. Literally. Imagine that."

Prowl frowned at her. "Interesting," was his only response before he added, "Perhaps he's changing tactics."

"Or perhaps," Swoop said, "it's just to his advantage at the moment to not be Starscream." At Prowl's quizzical look, she added, "Whatever the case, I'm not going to toss him in the brig unless he gives me reason to. And before you ask, no, he's _still_ not going to be questioned, either," she added firmly, making air quotes around the word "questioned."

Prowl gave her an arch look.

"Since when is that your decision to make?" he asked, although he already knew the answer to that question just as well as Swoop did, if her serene smile was any indication.

"Since about, what? Two months ago now?" she answered airily. At Prowl's sharp look in response, Swoop shrugged and added, "I have no real interest in pulling rank, but you need to know that I _will_ protect Starscream, at least for the foreseeable future. I need him, and for now I want to give him reason to trust _me_."

Prowl thought about arguing, but she had her chin raised at him, and he knew what that meant. Or at least he knew what it had meant when Corona had done it, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the gesture had an identical meaning coming from Corona's daughter.

"As you wish," he relented grudgingly.

"And speaking of things that Starscream has told me," Swoop ventured after a moment, her tone quieter and suddenly less confident, "I have a few questions."

She was suddenly nervous again, though she suspected that it had less to do with being intimidated by Prowl and more to do with a fear of another bombshell ripping apart her understanding of things. Prowl was looking at her, his head tilted inquisitively to the side again.

"Yes?" he patiently prompted as she searched for words.

"Starscream told me," Swoop eventually said, "something about Megatron's plan for the Uprising and its aftermath. That I wasn't supposed to die. That I was supposed to replace my mother when I matured."

Prowl nodded.

"That was _his_ plan, yes," he confirmed mildly.

"But not yours," Swoop asked sharply, picking up on his subtle emphasis. Prowl just gave her a knowing look in response at which Swoop snorted before adding, "Starscream told me that things went…awry, though."

Prowl huffed what might actually have been a choked-off laugh.

"Indeed they did," he agreed. "In more ways than one."

"And he seems to think that you had a lot to do with that," Swoop concluded.

Prowl looked at Swoop, and she could have sworn that there was amusement on his face.

" _Does_ he now?" Prowl responded thoughtfully. Then he shrugged and said, almost to himself, "Well, Starscream might be slightly smarter than I give him credit for."

"So it's true," Swoop said, half statement and half question.

"Yes," Prowl answered and then qualified, "to a certain degree. Starscream's thinking about the situation can't be correct, however. I can guarantee that he is…what's the saying? 'Barking down the wrong shrub?'"

"Barking up the wrong tree," Swoop corrected with something of a grin. Prowl was as bad with strange human sayings as Grimlock was.

"Whatever," Prowl responded, waving at her dismissively.

Swoop regarded him curiously for a moment, her brow furrowed in thought, before asking, "What makes you so certain that Starscream doesn't have it all figured out?"

" _Because_ ," Prowl answered calmly, "if Starscream had it all correctly 'figured out,' certain things would be much different, I should think."

Swoop frowned at that cryptic answer. It didn't satisfy her curiosity at all.

"Would you care to enlighten me?" she asked, but her tone made it obvious that it wasn't a request.

"What else has Starscream told you about what he suspects?" Prowl asked first, out of curiosity more than anything else. He knew that Starscream had been suspicious of him, all those years ago, and apparently he still was, enough so to maneuver Swoop into asking questions, perhaps reasoning that, of anyone, he'd be compelled to tell her the truth. And now Prowl found himself perversely curious to know how close Starscream was to the truth. But Swoop shook her head.

"Not much," she admitted. "I think he only told me what little he told me because I was angry, and he wanted to shut me up. The only other thing I know is that he believes that you had an accomplice, one who would know how to remove my spark safely."

Prowl made a noncommittal noise at that.

"I had two 'accomplices,' actually," he told Swoop readily enough. His candor surprised Swoop, but if he noticed the look on her face, he didn't acknowledge it. He simply continued, "But none of us needed to know how to remove your spark because that wasn't the plan at all. You're royal, so you wouldn't be able to be merged with a new body. We knew that, of course. That you had to be separated was one way that the plan went awry." 

"Oh," Swoop said, blinking. "So yes, Starscream doesn't have it completely right."

Prowl snorted and answered, "And that's not the only way he has it wrong. I would venture to say that the only thing he has right is that I was involved. In any case, it's a very long story, but many things went very wrong, and you were mortally damaged." Swoop's eyes widened at that, but Prowl kept talking, saying, "It was clear that you were going to die, and the only thing we could think to do was to remove your spark from your body and get it to the closest stasis vault before it faded. We had no idea what that would ultimately accomplish since we didn't think you'd ever be able to be re-merged, but it was...something, I suppose. Luckily, Hook was near to hand when the plan blew up and he had the knowledge and dexterity to do what needed to be done. So I suppose you could call him an 'accomplice,' but I doubt that he remembers being involved anymore."

"Why wouldn't he?" Swoop asked, perplexed.

"Because," Prowl answered, "he's a civil who was…conscripted…to the cause, something that is rarely one hundred percent effective and, so far as I know, never permanent. So, that made it easy enough to convince Hook to help at the time. But later on, he and his gestaltmates became troublesome, and they had to be...hmmm, conscripted again, not long before I left. That would have wiped out Hook's own memory of the incident as well as any memories of it that he might have shared with his gestaltmates."

"Wiped out?" Swoop echoed around a deep frown. Then she shook her head as if to clear it out and asked, "Why do I get the sense that you're using the word 'conscripted' but meaning something else entirely?" At the odd look that Prowl gave her, she quickly rethought her question and amended, "No, don't tell me. On second thought, I don't want to know right now."

Prowl actually smiled at her.

"A wise decision, my queen," he said, approvingly.

Swoop narrowed her eyes at that, surprised at the use of the honorific. No one else amongst the Autobots had seen fit to use it, so far. Then again, this was Prowl, and because of that perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised. However much she was currently irritating him, he was by nature all about protocol and propriety.

"So who were the _actual_ accomplices?" she asked him after a moment.

"One was Astrotrain," Prowl answered readily enough, "but as it turned out his part in the plan never happened. Since he was contacted and given instructions via a third party, he never knew much in the first place. So, strictly speaking, I had only one real accomplice, I suppose."

"And that was?" Swoop asked.

And Prowl actually hesitated, perhaps indecisively. He rose from his perch on the corner of his desk and paced again for a contemplative moment before coming to a decision and turning back to Swoop.

"That," he announced quietly, "was Thundercracker."

Swoop blinked slowly at him once. Twice.

"Thundercracker?" she echoed, bewildered and certain that she had misheard him.

"Thundercracker," Prowl confirmed with a nod, and when Swoop just continued to blink blandly at him, he added, "Big? Blue? Is usually found in close proximity to Starscream these days?"

"I _know_ who Thundercracker is," Swoop responded peevishly. "I just…I don't understand…"

"He had personal reasons," Prowl answered. "And in point of fact, he was not _my_ accomplice. I was _his_."

It took a long moment for Prowl's meaning to sink in, but when it did..."It was his idea," Swoop said, dazed. "That's why you knew that Starscream didn't have it right."

"Yes," Prowl answered, although she hadn't asked a question. "They weren't trinemates at the time, but they became so not long after, and if Starscream then learned of Thundercracker's involvement in the scheme...Well, as I said, things would be very different because, for one thing, I imagine that Thundercracker would no longer exist. And yes, it was Thundercracker's idea and my plan. Except that things didn't go according to that plan. Fortunately, they didn't go entirely according to Megatron's plan, either."

Swoop had started to pace as Prowl had spoken, her mind whirling. She had been barking up the wrong tree, indeed. She had been giving Prowl all sorts of credit for nobility. _Starscream_ had been giving Prowl grudging credit for nobility or at least for proper dedication to her caste, her family. But that hadn't been the case at all. It hadn't really been Prowl at all. He'd only been convinced to do what he did best, to formulate a plan. If anyone had been truly noble, it had been…

" _Why_?" Swoop plaintively asked, overwhelmed.

Prowl gave her a troubled look and thought about lying. But given that he'd held up lying as one of Starscream's cardinal sins, he knew that in good conscience he couldn't do that. Yet, he knew that he couldn't tell her the truth, either. So that left evasion.

"I can't tell you that," he said with genuine regret. "I'm sorry, my queen, but I can't."

Swoop gave him a hard look.

"Because you don't know?" she asked almost imperiously, and it was another opportunity for him to lie. Another opportunity that he didn't take. He shook his head.

"No, I know why," he answered quietly. "I know exactly why, but it isn't my place to tell you. You'll have to ask him."

"Sure," Swoop responded acidly. "The next time I'm trying to blow him out of the sky, I'll take a moment to have a friendly chat with him first."

Prowl gave her a wry look, and observed, "Ratchet and his sarcasm are terrible influences on you, you know."

Swoop grinned toothily at him and answered, "Yes, I know. Ain't it great?"

Prowl snorted and said, "Well, it makes you almost as sarcastic as Starscream, so I suppose that's something."And as Swoop chuckled at that, Prowl reached for a datapad that was lying on his desk. He dumped the data that it contained and then tapped some new information into it, before wordlessly offering the device to Swoop.

"What's this?" she asked, taking the datapad from Prowl with a frown.

"That," Prowl answered, "is a private comm frequency that will get you through directly to Thundercracker. It's heavily encrypted, so when and if you decide to contact him, you shouldn't set off any alarms either here or at Decepticon Headquarters."

Swoop frowned at him.

"You've been in contact with him all this time?" she asked, somewhat amazed, but Prowl shook his head in response.

"No, not at all," he answered mildly. "Not since shortly before we left Cybertron. But, in the unlikely event that you had survived the war while in the stasis vault on Cybertron, and in the extremely unlikely event that you had ended up being one of the sparks that we brought with us, and in the even more extremely unlikely event that you subsequently ended up merged at some point in time, he wanted to be kept informed. So, since you've beaten extraordinary odds against you…" He shrugged as his voice trailed off, gesturing at the datapad in Swoop's hand

Swoop stared down at that datapad, trying to coax her whirling thoughts into settling. She didn't have much luck. Dazedly, she turned away from Prowl and began to head toward his office door, intent on finding someplace quiet, where she could sit down, alone, and think. She was steps away from the door when it occurred to her that she was forgetting something. Abruptly halting her retreat, she whirled around to face Prowl again.

"Thank you, Prowl," she said quietly. "Thank you for this, I mean," she said, waving the datapad in the air, "but more than that…thank you for your part in saving me. I owe you my life, and that's more than I can ever repay."

Prowl inclined his head, acknowledging her words, but he said, "You owe me nothing, my queen. I was merely trying to do something of my duty in an otherwise untenable situation. But I am gratified that we managed to succeed in the long run, even though very little went according to plan."

Swoop smiled.

"You do know what they say about the best laid plans, don't you?" she teased lightly.

Prowl grimaced.

"Oh, I'm _very_ familiar with that one, yes," he answered ruefully.

Swoop only smiled at him again, and then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ought to note that Swoop's mom was named long before the coronavirus thing. :) I had it in my head that she and her brood all had names that were related to space or stars or atmospheric phenomena and things of that nature. So, there's Corona (as in, the outer atmosphere of a star, not the Mexican beer :) ) and Eclipse, and the others that I named were similar. Mirage was an outlier, of course, but since he's a canon character, I couldn't do much about his name. But a mirage is at least a visual phenomenon caused by light refraction, so it can sort of fit if you stand on your head and squint. :)
> 
> As it turned out, Corona's name ended up edited out of the original version of this story. I recall having a reason to do so at the time, but I don't remember what that reason was. So, I've restored it while re-editing for this version of the story. I figured it made sense to do so now, since she will be a (sort of) main character in the next big story. OCs, yay. :|


	16. Relativity

In some ways, Swoop reflected, it was just nice to be outside. She'd had little opportunity to fly over the past couple of months, so it was nice to do so. It helped that, for all that it was winter, it was a cloudless and warm day where she was, three-quarters of the way down the Baja Peninsula, meandering her way toward the agreed-upon rendezvous location, an uninhabited spot on the western coast of Central America. The sunlight was pleasantly warm on her body, and she always appreciated warmth. She was flying low, low enough to occasionally skim the surface of the ocean beneath her, partly to enjoy the warmth that lower altitudes retained, but mostly to stay out of the main commercial flight paths because she had no patience for stupid human air traffic controllers and their stupid opinions as to where and how she could fly. The excursion would have been nothing but pleasant, were it not for the knife of uncertainty and nervousness that was twisting her innards. 

Whether or not to contact Thundercracker had been a difficult decision, and Swoop had ultimately required a sounding board to make it. Her favorite sounding board had always been Snarl, so it was no surprise that she turned to him. He was an individual of very few words, was instead a listener and a deep thinker, although for the longest time only Swoop had been aware of the latter qualities. Once Snarl listened to and thought about a problem, he usually dispensed excellent, if laconic and tactlessly-delivered, advice. 

She had been determined to be vague with Snarl, to give him only enough detail that he could understand the problem at hand and the decision that she needed to make. As usual, that plan went out the window, and she had ended up spewing everything at him instead, holding nothing back, repeating much of what both Starscream and Prowl had told her down to the last detail. Snarl had heard her out quietly, his face entirely impassive, never interrupting her, and then he had taken some time to digest what she'd told him.

And then he'd said, very quietly, "I know you, Swoop. If you don't contact him, the not knowing will drive you crazy."

She's offered a few more arguments, but Snarl had been right. The not knowing had already been driving her crazy, but she had apparently needed someone to point that fact out to her in order to nudge her into action. So, she had decided to contact Thundercracker right then and there, before her courage left her and before she could think too much about the decision. Snarl had stayed with her for moral support, if nothing else, and Swoop had been glad of his silent, supportive company.

The conversation, such as it was, had been very brief. The tone of Thundercracker's voice had made it very plain that he had been utterly shocked to be hearing from her, of all people, but he had quickly told her that he couldn't speak freely at Decepticon Headquarters, and they'd made arrangements to meet in person the next day. When the conversation, such as it had been, had ended, Snarl had immediately offered to go with her, but Swoop had declined his offer, determined to go alone. Snarl had thought going alone to be a very bad idea, given who she was and given who she was going to see, but he'd never been able to dissuade her when she'd made up her mind about doing something. Besides, she could take care of herself perfectly well. The both knew that.

The most that Snarl could do was to help her to slip out of Autobot Headquarters that night since leaving unseen was easier to do at night than during the day, and that was exactly what Snarl had done. He'd distracted the sentries while Swoop had slipped out, carefully avoiding being detected by the surveillance cameras. She'd climbed up to the top of the volcano and used that as a jumping-off point to fly off into the night. In case there was anyone patrolling close by, she flew unpowered for a few hundred kilometers, so as to be silent but for the rhythmic _fwoof_ ing of her wingbeats. Swoop had known that she would be missed the next day, but she'd put enough distance between herself and Headquarters overnight that she hoped to be able to complete her clandestine meeting before she'd be located and retrieved. So far, she was still alone, no contacts on her scanners, and she'd turned off her comm so that she couldn't be pinged or tracked that way.

And it wasn't long before she reached the rendezvous location. She transformed and landed on a lovely but lonely stretch of shoreline, rocky and turbulent, waves crashing rhythmically and unceasingly against unyielding rocks in plumes of glittering spray. She found Thundercracker sitting on top of a large and mostly flat outcropping of rock. He was a bright splash of color against the surrounding black volcanic rocks, warm sunlight glinting off of his azure armor. He was far enough from the shoreline that he wasn't getting wet, and he was staring out over the surf at the horizon, apparently deep in thought, so deep that he didn't hear Swoop approach, which was surprising. Warriors were usually hyperaware of their surroundings, but it seemed as if Thundercracker was a million miles away. When she made a small but deliberate noise to announce her presence, he started violently, and as his gaze settled on her, his eyes narrowed at her questioningly.

"You look different," Thundercracker announced without preamble.

Swoop frowned in confusion, but then she nodded. She sometimes forgot all about her new body.

"It was necessary," she answered quietly.

Thundercracker nodded at that, as if her words had actually explained anything, and then he slid off of the outcropping. He stood there for a long moment, as still as the black rocks that surrounded them. He regarded Swoop silently, staring at her, studying her long enough that she had to fight the urge to fidget nervously. And then, when she was certain that she could bear his scrutiny no longer, Thundercracker finally spoke again.

"I suppose that I should come right to the point," he rumbled at her, barely loud enough to be heard over the surf and the fitful onshore wind. "We probably don't have much time before one or the other of us is missed."

"True enough," Swoop answered with a nod, going for calm.

Thundercracker slowly stepped closer to her then, slowly enough that she didn't feel threatened, until he was practically within arm's reach. He was close enough that he could further lower his voice when he spoke, yet she could still hear him over the background noise.

"To my knowledge," Thundercracker informed Swoop levelly, "I was the last person to be with Corona before she was…before she died. Given that, there is an extremely high probability that you are my offspring."

In response, Swoop could only stare up at him in baffled shock. Her mouth opened and closed ineffectually as she fought to think of something to say, but words completely failed her, and Thundercracker found himself adding, almost bitterly, "I was a favorite of hers, and she wanted another daughter. She didn't believe that any of those that she had were worthy. That she chose me was her way of honoring me, I suppose."

Swoop continued to stare at him for a long moment. Unbidden, she suddenly recalled what Mirage had told her about their mother being so very certain that she would be a flier. Suddenly, her certainty made much more sense.

"I don't…" she started to say, finally finding her voice, but then she interrupted herself. "No, I do understand," she said. "I understand what you're saying. But it's…this…This is something of a…surprise?"

Thundercracker gave her a wry little smile, watching as she moved to hitch herself up onto the same outcropping that he'd been sitting on because her knees were suddenly feeling a little weak.

"No more of a surprise than it is to me, I assure you," Thundercracker answered her very seriously. "I had pretty much given up hope that you had survived. It's been so long, and the chances that you were still alive were…"

Swoop drew her knees up into her chest, shivering uncontrollably, the constant wind and Thundercracker's revelation having chilled her. The sudden and emotion-charged tremor in Thundercracker's voice as it trailed off surprised her, and she stared up him, conflicting emotions coursing through her as well. He had always been her enemy, but that was mostly because she had been told that he was. She had never felt any strong, personal animosity toward him, in particular, not the way that she did toward Starscream and pretty much any other Decepticon. The lack of such a feeling toward Thundercracker had always seemed strange to her, but now it actually made sense.

"Most of the sparks in the stasis vault where we hid you were destroyed during the course of the war," Thundercracker was saying meanwhile, "and I didn't know whether or not the sparks that, so Prowl told me, the Autobots had taken with them from Cybertron were still viable at all. I often thought about contacting Prowl and asking him about that, but it was better not to know, in some ways." At the questioning look that Swoop gave him, he elaborated, "If I didn't know, then there was still hope. And then even when you Dinobots appeared…Well, you weren't generally given credit for having sparks at all, amongst us."

Swoop grimaced at that.

"I'm hardly surprised," she said. "Until all of this happened with me, I'm pretty sure that some of the Autobots still didn't give us that much credit." She paused then as her voice trailed off, thinking, and then she added, trying to sound more collected than she felt, "Well, at least now I know why you did what you did. I didn't understand it at all, when Prowl told me, and he refused to explain, said that it wasn't his place. He said that I had to ask you about it, and I guess now I understand why."

Thundercracker gave her a haunted look, and then he, too, hitched himself onto the outcropping that she was sitting on. He sat himself near to her but not touching her, and he turned toward her so that he could lock his gaze with hers.

"I could not sit by and let Megatron do to you what he wanted to do," he said quietly but very intensely. "Even if it ultimately turned out that you weren't mine, it wasn't _right_."

Swoop blinked at him, surprised by his vehement conviction. She was about to say something to him when he slid off the outcropping again and began to pace, his movements restless, almost frantic.

" _None_ of what happened back then was right," he said as he paced. "Not what Corona did…and not what we did. But I couldn't stop any it, not by myself. I knew that there were a few others who weren't entirely happy with all of the details of Megatron's plan, but there weren't nearly enough of us, certainly not enough of us to do anything about it. But then I realized that at the very least I could try to keep you out of Megatron's hands."

Swoop nodded, more to herself than to Thundercracker.

"And so you spoke to Prowl about it," she said quietly, "knowing that he was unhappy in some ways, too."

"Yes," Thundercracker answered with a nod, his pacing slowing and then halting. He turned to face Swoop as he added, "I had thought merely to take you someplace far away, someplace safe. Prowl thought it a better idea to make it look as if you had been accidentally killed first, collateral damage, so that Megatron wouldn't keep looking for you. But as it turned out…"

Swoop nodded absently.

"I know," she said. "Things didn't go according to plan."

"That's one way to put it," Thundercracker muttered. "Your spark wasn't supposed to be separated from your body, for one thing."

"I know," Swoop said with a nod. "Prowl told me a little of what happened, and he mentioned that separating me was a last resort even though re-merging me wouldn't have worked."

"Yes. Except that...it did?" Thundercracker asked. " _Twice_ now?"

Swoop sighed and said, "It's a long story. Let's just say that the next time you see Wheeljack, you ought to kiss his feet. And I'd suggest offering him your firstborn, too, but...Well."

Thundercracker smirked and said, "I'll keep that in mind."

Silence fell between them then. For long minutes there was just the wind, the crashing waves, and the occasional cry of a seabird. Swoop was trying to untangle the knot that her thoughts had become, and Thundercracker… When she looked at him, Swoop didn't know what to think at all.

She had known, distantly and in a clinical way, that she had to have a father, but she also knew that when it came to royal offspring, the fathers were seen as necessary but ultimately inconsequential donors. The queen's offspring were the queen's, and no one else's. Which was fine because, usually, the father's didn't particularly want any contact with their offspring, either. It just wasn't their way. Mirage had told her that most royal offspring didn't know, much less care, who their father was. He certainly didn't. And as for her own father, Swoop had simply assumed that he no longer existed. It had been a long time, and the war had certainly taken its toll during those years, so simple probability had shaped her assumption. Given all of that, she had also come to think of her father as inconsequential, or at the very least she had quickly come to the conclusion that she would never know who he had been.

And yet again, she'd been wrong. So very wrong. And, obviously, Thundercracker took an unheard-of amount of interest in her and her welfare, enough to have risked his own life to remove her from a situation that would have been very disagreeable for her and that he considered to be wrong. Of course, it was possible that Thundercracker was mistaken…but somehow Swoop knew that he wasn't mistaken. She wasn't sure from where that sudden and certain knowledge was stemming, but it was there, palpable, and it was very strong. And even if it hadn't been there, the relationship was an easy-enough thing to confirm or disprove. A few scans and…

Except that it wasn't likely that Thundercracker would be willing to accompany her to Autobot Headquarters to run such scans. Because he was her enemy. Or their enemy, at least. Suddenly, Swoop wasn't quite so willing to consider him an enemy, an inclination that was fueled by her suddenly-held knowledge. And she was curious, too. 

"Why did you stay?" she asked Thundercracker quietly, curiously. "With Megatron, I mean," she clarified when he gave her an odd look. "Prowl left. Why didn't you?"

The question caught Thundercracker off-guard, even though he supposed that it shouldn't have surprised him that she would ask. It was a reasonable, logical question, given what he'd done.

"I had… _have_ …a few personal reasons to stay," he answered as quietly as she had asked the question. "But mostly I thought it best to remain in a position where I could keep an eye on Megatron and the things that he did in the future. If he had any of the sparks from the remaining stasis vault merged, then there was a chance that…"

"There was a chance that he would eventually find me, if I could re-merge successfully," Swoop finished, understanding, as Thundercracker's voice trailed off. Thundercracker nodded solemnly and, attempting to lighten the mood a bit, Swoop added, "I'll bet you had some tense moments after the Stunticons were merged. And the Aerialbots, too, I suppose."

Thundercracker smiled faintly and said, "I've always tried to go a little easier on the latter, just in case. Funny how it never once occurred to me to go easier on you and the other Dinobots…"

Swoop smiled.

"Oh, we're pretty tough," she assured him sincerely. "No permanent harm done."

"I'm glad," Thundercracker answered, smiling back almost warmly. He paused then, thinking, regarding her appraisingly. "But…I have a question," he eventually ventured, hesitantly.

"Shoot," Swoop answered, shrugging.

"Starscream," Thundercracker said.

"Ah," Swoop responded, wincing and almost reflexively looking away.

"He was acting very strangely before he…left," Thundercracker persisted. "And now that I know about you, and thinking about how I used to feel and behave when, uh, under the influence, I'm seeing some similarities, in hindsight, and I have to wonder…"

Swoop looked back at Thundercracker, meeting his curious and questioning gaze squarely.

"I imprinted on him," she told him calmly enough, "when I had been captured a while back."

"I see," Thundercracker responded flatly, automatically understanding every one of the implications of what she said and not wanting to think about them at all.

"We…met," Swoop continued awkwardly. "Megatron had ordered him to destroy me, but he decided not to, for whatever reason, so we went our separate ways afterward. But there was a…complication." When Thundercracker just frowned at her, she added, "The imprint didn't break, and that's why he was acting so strangely. It's why he left, thinking that I could help him. Well, that and Megatron finding out that I was still alive, which I suppose Megatron was…less than happy about."

Thundercracker grimaced at that gigantic understatement.

"That's one way to put it," he murmured.

"So…Starscream's at Autobot Headquarters now," Swoop finished. "We've been trying to treat the…uh, condition between us, but nothing has worked so far."

"But why didn't the imprint break?" Thundercracker asked after a moment of thought. "I've never heard of such a thing."

Swoop sighed a long and weary sigh.

"It's a very long story," she said. "Involving things about Starscream that I'm really not at liberty to talk about, actually, given that he's sort of a patient, in a way. And besides, I'm not even sure that my thinking is correct."

Thundercracker opened his mouth to persist in questioning her, but then he subsided. And then he moved to settle on the outcropping next to Swoop again.

"Well," he said quietly after a moment spent staring out over the crashing surf. "I'm glad that he's safe, at least."

Swoop turned her head to give him an odd look, surprise liberally mixing with confusion.

"Really?" she asked.

Thundercracker smirked.

"Whatever the Autobots might have told you," he said ruefully, "we don't all hate each other. Starscream is a gigantic pain in the thruster, sure, but he _is_ my trinemate, and I do care about what happens to him. So I was…worried. Before he left and after."

Swoop smiled slightly at him.

"I'll tell him you said so," she said lightly.

"Oh, _please_ don't," Thundercracker answered with a snort. "I'll never hear the end of it."

Swoop chuckled, and then another silence, this one almost companionable, fell between them. Swoop closed her eyes and canted her face upward, appreciating the warmth of the sun on her face for a few moments, but then she felt compelled to murmur, without looking at Thundercracker. "You could be safe, too, you know."

"Excuse me?" he answered distractedly.

Swoop shrugged.

"It seems to me," she said, "that Megatron could connect the dots pretty easily if he set his mind to it. I'm sure that he believes that what happened is entirely Prowl's fault, just like Starscream does, but if he puts just a little thought into it, you could be in danger."

Thundercracker frowned.

"I doubt it," he said. "He hasn't connected the dots yet, and it's been thousands of years now. Most of his paranoia is focused on Starscream these days, and he seems to see me as a mostly-loyal subordinate. I've learned to play the role well enough."

"But he didn't have any reason to suspect that I was still alive for most of that time," Swoop insisted. "Now that he knows that I am alive, he's bound to wonder why at some point. Isn't he?"

Thundercracker thought about that for a moment.

"I…suppose," he said slowly, uncertainly.

Swoop turned toward him then in sudden urgency, insistently holding his gaze as she said, quietly but intensely, "Come back with me. We can confirm our relationship, and I promise that no one will harm you, just as no one's harmed Starscream. And then I'll know that you're safe. Because otherwise I might not be able to sleep at night."

Thundercracker stared at her, surprised by her concern for him. He hadn't expected that. He'd expected her to disbelieve him, even perhaps to be angry. He'd half-expected that she would be too stupid to understand what he told her, long-ingrained propaganda being the hard-to-overcome thing that it was. But most of all, he'd expected her not to care. He'd been prepared for that, prepared to accept that he would always care about her and want to protect her but that she would not return any kind of sentiment, that she would likely, in fact, rebuff him entirely since he was beneath her. Royals were very arrogant and very cold that way. Those outside of their caste were generally seen as useful tools, at best.

But Swoop wasn't cold, perhaps because she had not been raised as a royal, had in fact been surrounded mostly by civils for her entire life as she knew it, and so she did not seem to have the typical superior royal-caste mindset, which gave Thundercracker pause. He had always been told that their mindset was the royal caste's birthright, that it was ingrained, simply a property of their collective being, but that obviously wasn't the case because he could already tell, even from very brief exposure, that Swoop was like no royal that he had ever known. So obviously, the mindset was merely a result of upbringing, not something inborn at all, as he'd always been told, and this made him faintly and illogically angry at likely long-dead individuals who spread such misinformation. And it had definitely given him something to think about.

And Swoop obviously wasn't stupid, yet she seemed to believe and to accept with odd and completely unexpected equanimity what he had told her, even though as far as he knew she had no real reason to do so. She wasn't angry, she apparently didn't hate him, and she apparently cared about his welfare. _And_ Starscream's, which was perhaps the most surprising thing of all because he knew there was enmity between them. Thundercracker wasn't sure how to react to any of it, and he certainly wasn't sure how to answer her offer. He simply stared at Swoop.

"There's no reason for you to keep an eye on Megatron anymore," she was saying. "There's no reason for you to stay there, in potential danger, even if it's just a remote chance of danger. Come with me," she repeated imploringly, "where I know you'll be safe."

Thundercracker blinked at her, but then he shook his head. Sadly. Regretfully.

"There _is_ a reason for me to stay," he said quietly. "I appreciate the offer, Swoop, I truly do. And, honestly, I'd love the opportunity to get to know you. But I can't leave Skywarp behind to deal with the fall-out of Starscream and me leaving. That wouldn't be fair to him."

"He could come, too," Swoop offered immediately, insistently. "We'd just have to contact him, and—"

"I don't think that he would want to come," Thundercracker interrupted her sadly, quietly. "He's…very loyal. And in order to convince him, I would need to explain some things to him that would be very difficult to explain and even more difficult for him to accept. So I'm—" Thundercracker's words cut off abruptly as he jerked his head around. Swoop stared at him, confused, and then he turned back to her and asked, urgently, "Do you hear that?"

Swoop cocked her head, listening intently…and then she heard it. The telltale whining rumble of Seeker engines. The sound of their approach had been masked by the surf.

"Yes," she said, meeting Thundercracker's gaze in dismay.

"Get out of here," Thundercracker immediately ordered, his tone of voice brooking no argument. "I'll hold them off as long as I can."

Swoop hesitated, loath to leave him to what was surely his doom, but then she moved to obey. Unfortunately, it was too late. What seemed to Swoop to be mere milliseconds later, the sky was littered with a squadron of unfamiliar Seekers, Megatron was landing, and Soundwave, although she tried to evade him, had her firmly in his grasp. Thundercracker, after a brief but valiant fight, ended up restrained by three of his Seeker comrades, but at least he was alive.

Megatron approached them once it was all over, a disturbingly delighted smile on his face.

"Well, Thundercracker!" he boomed jovially. "When Soundwave detected that odd, incoming, not-quite-encrypted-enough signal yesterday, I thought that you'd be heading out to see Starscream." He leveled an ambiguous and measuring gaze on Swoop and said, almost lightly, "Imagine my surprise." He approached Swoop then, halting a few paces away from her, staring appraisingly down at her. "For such a small thing," he eventually informed her, "you have become a rather large nuisance, Dinobot."

Swoop glared back at him, her eyes narrowed and her chin raised defiantly, refusing to be frightened.

"Happy to be of service," she growled.

Megatron smirked and then circled her, still appraisingly, taking in her new body.

"You are Eclipse," he eventually murmured to her, "are you not?" Swoop couldn't quite prevent the surprised look that bloomed on her face, and in response Megatron elaborated as he continued to circle her, "I've had some time to consider the issue at hand, and it's the only thing that makes sense. Queens do not come from nowhere," he said. And then he stopped his circling, leaned toward her, and lowered his voice to a more menacing level as he added, "And I watched all of your sisters die. And your mother, of course. And _her_ sisters. But not you. No, I only saw your body and heard lame excuses from _Prowl_ ," he spat, the name a derisive epithet, "about why you were dead. It all makes sense, now. Well, except the part about _why_."

And with that, he suddenly lurched around and focused his speculative and angry attention on Thundercracker, who didn't so much as flinch under Megatron's penetrating glare. Swoop had to give him credit for that. He regarded Megatron with outward calm, at least, and said nothing.

"I can understand what Starscream did," Megatron said almost conversationally to Thundercracker. "Allowing this… _creature_ to live has the potential to undermine me, and he lives for that. I should never have allowed him to meet with her without sending along some insurance. I see that now, but what's done is done, and perhaps it's for the best. But _you_? What part do you play in this, Thundercracker? Why are you here, now, with her? And why did she contact you?"

Thundercracker merely continued to stare levelly at him.

"You would do well," Megatron advised him when it was clear that Thundercracker had no intention of answering his questions, "to answer me. I can find out the answers to my very simple questions, of course, but that won't be at all pleasant for you. It would be so much easier, on all of us, if you would just speak up."

And then Thundercracker said, slowly and quietly, "I would imagine that you're going to kill me because I know about her now. So why should I tell you anything?"

"Oh, this doesn't have to end in anyone's death, Thundercracker!" Megatron answered, almost lightly. "Not yours. Not hers," he added, gesturing at Swoop, "and not even…oh, _Skywarp's_." He paused then, obviously looking for a reaction, but was frustrated again. Thundercracker was silent, stone-faced, for a long moment, then:

"Unlike Starscream," he said evenly, "I don't bargain, much less grovel, for my life. And she," he continued, gesturing with his chin at Swoop, "is far more valuable to you alive and unharmed, as I'm sure you're aware, so I know that you're bluffing by threatening her. And Skywarp," he finished with impressive calm, "means nothing to me beyond the fact that he is a competent-enough trinemate. So, care to try again?"

At that, Megatron snarled, his face a ferocious scowl, and backhanded Thundercracker across his jaw with enough force to stagger the Seeker. He would have fallen if not for the restraining grasp of his comrades.

"I see that you have learned insolence quite well from Starscream," Megatron growled at him. "Really, I'm surprised that you'd be stupid enough to emulate him, given what you've witnessed over the years. I've always given you credit for being the brains of your trine, Thundercracker, but perhaps it's been Skywarp all along."

"No," Thundercracker answered still levelly even as he worked his aching jaw. "No, he's just the blind one, is all."

Megatron growled again, but physically controlled himself.

"I will deal with you in a moment," he snarled, the words an ugly promise. He turned back to Swoop then. "Or perhaps," he said, regarding her speculatively, "I can simply find out from you, my dear. In fact, I could find out _many_ interesting things from you, couldn't I? Of course, what Thundercracker said is true. Since you refuse to die, you have managed to make yourself valuable to me…until you produce a successor. But after that…"

Swoop glared at him, resolving to be as calm and as seemingly unafraid as Thundercracker had been.

"Do your worst," she growled mutinously, her face a sneer.

Megatron smirked at her, leaned in very close, intimately close, and whispered, "Oh, don't worry, little one. I intend to."

And then suddenly, somehow, Swoop's world started to go black, as if she was being forced offline, although she hadn't felt any sort of connection being made. Then again, it was Soundwave who was restraining her, and she wasn't at all sure what he was capable of. No one was. No one wanted to know, really. All Swoop knew was that she was losing consciousness, and it really didn't matter how or why. She could do nothing to prevent it and the last thing she heard as she was lowered with incongruous gentleness to the ground and then as the blackness completely enveloped her like a shroud, was the sound of repeated fusion cannon fire, the dull clang and thud of bodies falling against rock and sand, and then Thundercracker starting to scream helplessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thundercracker's Darth Vader moment. So goofy, but so FUN! :)
> 
> Also, I confess that I love the notion of Swoop sounding like those flying dragon things that the Nazgul ride on in _The Lord of the Rings_. Sorry, not an LOTR fan at all, so I have no idea what the flying dragon things are called, even though they're my favorite thing about those movies, seriously. That big bass _fwoof_!


	17. Tactics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part of this chapter is almost completely rewritten. When I wrote this story about a decade ago, I rushed through the last five or six chapters. So, for one thing, there are some holes that I've realized really do need filling. This might require an extra, brand new chapter, even. Or, perhaps I can sprinkle in some hole-filling in existing chapters. I haven't decided which would be better yet. And for another thing, I wasn't entirely happy with most of those original chapters, anyway. So, I've decided to spiff them up a bit for this posting, which might mean a bit more time between postings, but...eh.
> 
> Originally, the two chapters I'm posting today were in the opposite order to how I'm posting them here. I think it flows a little better that way. Maybe.
> 
> Also, the rewriting of this chapter resulted in some foreshadowing, of sorts, being added because doing so amused me. It's not foreshadowing for this story, but for future events.

Starscream jerked upright on his berth in the medbay, for reasons that, at first, he couldn't identify. The feeling he had was odd, like nothing he'd experienced before, so he couldn't immediately classify it. He knew only that something was wrong. That something was out of place. That… 

Alarmed, he lurched off of the berth and then staggered toward the door. It slid obligingly open, giving him a view of the medbay's main ward. Ratchet was there. "Where is she?" Starscream growled at him.

Ratchet, puzzled, turned toward Starscream and took in his posture. He was leaning heavily against the doorjamb, as if it was all that was holding him upright, and there was an almost wild look on his face. But it was different than imprint desperation, and it was too early for that anyway. It was, Ratchet realized, more like concern, of the slightly panicked variety.

"Who?" he asked.

Starscream scowled at him and spat, annoyed, "Just how many 'she's do you have around here? Swoop, of course!"

Ratchet frowned, still puzzled.

"I don't know," he said mildly, with an unconcerned shrug. "She should be here any minute, although she's already ten minutes late, and that's really not like her at…"

The medic's voice trailed off as he watched Starscream shake his head vehemently. Once he pushed himself away from the doorway against which he'd been leaning, he approached Ratchet rather unsteadily.

"No," he said quietly but somewhat manically, his eyes fever-bright. "She isn't _here_. She isn't…she isn't on this base," he added, frowning as he realized the implication of what he was feeling.

"What are you talking about?" Ratchet asked, but Starscream had become inwardly focused, as if he was searching inside of himself for something. Or, Ratchet realized uneasily, as if he was searching for someone. After a moment or two of "searching," a horrified expression crossed Starscream's face, which exacerbated Ratchet's unease.

"No," Starscream murmured more to himself than to Ratchet. "I have to talk to Optimus Prime," he announced much more loudly, spinning away from Ratchet, as if to go and do exactly that. 

"Whoa, Nellie!" Ratchet protested, grabbing Starscream by a wing, since one became conveniently close as Starscream turned away from him. Starscream's own momentum jerked him backwards with enough force that he lost his footing and almost slammed back into Ratchet. "If you go charging off like that," Ratchet told him, "you're only going to get yourself killed by someone. Tell me what's wrong."

"There's no _time_!" Starscream insisted, righting himself with a snarl and impatiently jerking his wing out of Ratchet's irritating grasp.

" _Make_ time," Ratchet insisted, brooking no argument as he raised his voice by a couple of decibel levels and stepped threateningly closer to Starscream. "Because you're not leaving here unless you do."

Starscream scowled mutinously at the medic. But then, with a mighty effort, having already learned that Ratchet was as stubborn as they came, he calmed himself and said, simply, " _He_ has her."

"Who?"

" _Megatron_ , stupid," Starscream hissed.

"What?" Ratchet responded, alarmed. "But…How?"

"I don't know!" Starscream almost howled in response. "I only know that _he has her_!"

"Because," Ratchet said, blinking a few times as the light dawned with sickening clarity, "you know where she is."

Starscream grimaced.

"You catch on _so_ fast," he commented sarcastically, sarcasm that Ratchet chose to ignore. And then Starscream added, "She's…on the other side of the planet. Not at Decepticon Headquarters but…but…"

"Let's go," Ratchet said, grabbing the Seeker by one arm and heading swiftly for the medbay doors, comm'ing Optimus Prime as he did so. Snarl, who'd been one of Starscream's self-assigned guards for the day, fell into step with them as they exited, and Ratchet couldn't help but notice the somewhat guilty expression on his face.

"Snarl?" he asked quietly, curiously, of the Dinobot once he'd finished informing Prime that he was bringing Starscream to his office and that Swoop was possibly in danger.

"She left last night," Snarl answered him shortly and just as quietly.

" _What_?" Ratchet responded, alarmed. "Why? Why didn't you tell anyone?"

Snarl hesitated, taking a second to cast an odd glance at Starscream.

"Because I helped her leave," Snarl said. Ratchet opened his mouth, probably to berate him, but Snarl spoke over him, "It would take too long to explain why," he said. "And it doesn't really matter now. But I must go with the rescue party, if there will be one."

"Oh, there will be one," Starscream growled viciously before Ratchet could say anything. The expression on his face was thundering and somewhat frightening to behold. "Even if it's only a party of me." He glanced up at the big Dinobot and added with an approving nod, "And you."

Snarl nodded wordlessly, satisfied. Ratchet just sighed a deep and resigned sigh, one full of foreboding.

******

Optimus Prime's office was very crowded, with little room to move. This was because, once Snarl had "helpfully" comm'ed Grimlock to inform him of the situation, he and Slag insisted on crowding themselves in and being part of the process. Sludge would have, too, except that he wasn't on the base and he wouldn't have fit into the room, anyway. With three Dinobots, Ratchet, Prowl, Starscream, and Optimus Prime in the room, it was already packed to the proverbial rafters. Ratchet had moved to leave once he'd delivered Starscream, but the look that Optimus had given him had made it clear that he wanted Ratchet there as a potential calming influence on the Dinobots. Ratchet wasn't sure that it was possible for them to be calm under the circumstances. He wasn't sure that it was possible for he himself to be calm under the circumstances, so he had no idea how he was supposed to calm them. Still, he'd gamely crammed himself into a corner to observe, if nothing else.

"I _know_ where she is!" Starscream was insisting urgently. Optimus Prime was leaning back against his desk, and Starscream in turn was leaning into him, so that his face was mere inches from the Autobot leader's. "I know where she is _all the time_. And where she is right now matches the location of an abandoned outpost of ours. It's in the Gobi Desert." He reached around Prime to snatch a datapad off of his messy desk and hurriedly scribbled a set of coordinates on it before shoving it back at Optimus. "There."

Optimus took the datapad from Starscream, regarding it in silent thought while Prowl said, "It makes sense." In response to the odd look that Optimus aimed at him, he grimaced and added, "Clearly, Megatron doesn't want her dead anymore, or else he would have simply destroyed her. He's obviously changed tactics, and if I know him--"

Starscream interrupted Prowl with a snort and spat, " _If_ you know him? Of anyone in the _entire universe_ , you--"

"This is _not_ the time," Prowl interrupted in turn. His voice was calm but steely, and the glare that he leveled at Starscream was lethal enough that Starscream subsided, taking a step away and shutting his mouth. Prowl turned back to Optimus. "The logical course of action for Megatron to take would be to keep Swoop under his control until she produces a successor. After that, he'll essentially be at the place he thought he'd be after the Uprising, with an infant future queen that he can control. Which is exactly where he wants to be. At that point Swoop will no longer be of value to him."

"Which means that he'll kill her," Starscream put in, translating from the Prowl-ese out of long habit.

At that, there was a chorus of growling and snarling from the half of the room that was filled to the brim with Dinobots. Grimlock broke from their huddle to stomp his way over to Starscream, looming over him for a long moment before bending down to stare threateningly at Starscream's face. Commendably, Starscream held his ground, glaring right back up at the Dinobot leader.

"No, he will _not_ kill Swoop," Grimlock snarled, jabbing a finger none-too-gently into one of Starscream's wings a few times, figuring that doing so would irritate him as much as it irritated Swoop. Before Starscream had a chance to respond to the insult with anything more than a snarl and an outraged expression, Grimlock swung around to glare at Optimus Prime, as well. " _We_ will go and get her. Right now." And by "we," he meant the Dinobots, of course.

"And then we'll barbecue Megatron and eat him for lunch," Slag contributed with a disturbing grin full of very sharp teeth. "Maybe Snarl, too, for letting her go," he added, but it was clear from the look that he gave Snarl that he was joking. Maybe. Slag did have a sense of humor. It was just very subtle and tended to be macabre. Snarl only glowered at him in response.

Optimus gave Prowl a wry look, meanwhile. "It's not a _bad_ plan," he said.

Prowl sighed at that. "No, it isn't a bad plan," he agreed. "It's an _absolutely terrible_ plan." He leveled the look that Starscream had long ago named his _You are a moron_ look at Prime, and Starscream, despite himself, snickered madly because for once that look wasn't being aimed at him. He briefly wondered when and where Prowl had gotten a sense of humor, dry as a desert as it was.

Meanwhile, Slag stomped past Starscream in order to loom over Prowl, and his loom was far more threatening than Grimlock's because it involved smoke and licks of fire wafting from his vents, as if he was that fire demon thing in those ridiculous _Lord of the Rings_ movies that Skywarp liked so much. Starscream found himself edging away from Slag, strategically putting Grimlock between himself and the other Dinobot. He hated that fire.

"Is not a bad plan," Slag was snarling viciously down at Prowl, in a tone that would make anyone with half a processor run for the hills if it was directed at them. Anyone but Prowl, apparently. He was unmoved, merely regarded Slag with calm resolve. He didn't give him the _You are a moron_ look, though, which Starscream found interesting. Odd, but interesting.

"It is the very worst plan," Prowl argued back. "And you know it. You are too emotionally close to the situation, and _you know_ ," he said, honest-to-Primus _poking Slag in the chest with one finger_ with each emphasized word, "what's likely to happen because of that." Slag growled at all of that from somewhere deep down in his chest, rumbling like a volcano seconds away from blowing its top, complete with fire and smoke, but he didn't argue back. Prowl continued, addressing all three Dinobots in the room, "If you, _any_ of you much less all of you, were to go feral and become incapable of thinking straight, Swoop's liable to end up dead. Not to mention the rest of you. Is that what you want?"

"Of course it isn't," Grimlock growled, pulling up to his full height. "But _you_ ," he continued, uncrossing his arms in order to jab an accusing finger at Prowl, "will just want to _talk_ about what to do for the next century instead of _doing something_."

"Planning _is_ doing something, Grimlock," Optimus Prime said calmly before Prowl could. "Going off half-cocked, on the other hand, will accomplish nothing."

"It accomplishes more than _talking_ does," Grimlock peevishly grumbled.

"Perhaps," Optimus conceded. "But there is time to forge a plan that has a good chance to succeed."

Starscream snorted at that. "I suppose there's time in the sense that there has to be a successor on hand before Megatron will kill Swoop," he said snidely. "That'll take a few months, at the very least, so by all means, let's _chat_ , shall we? After all, it's not as if Megatron will want that successor as soon as possible because Swoop will _certainly_ be a model prisoner who will make no trouble at all for him. And, gee, who do you think the father of that successor will be, hmmm?" A horrified expression bloomed on Optimus's face as he realized Starscream's implication, and Starscream pointed at him and sarcastically sniped, "And the light dawns!"

That earned Starscream a glare from Optimus, although he didn't glare nearly as well as Prowl did, so Starscream was undeterred. 

"Going off half-cocked isn't a good plan, true," Starscream continued, dropping the snide tone, "but we _do_ need to move quickly. Before Megatron has a chance to fortify his position, if nothing else."

"I concur," Prowl put in, quietly.

"And I need my weapons back," Starscream insisted.

Optimus hesitated and then was shocked when Prowl backed Starscream up, saying, "He's the only one who knows the outpost, Prime. He knows the way in, knows the way around. He has to go, and it wouldn't be fair to make him go defenseless."

"Fine," Optimus growled, folding his arms across his chest, obviously not appreciating being ganged up on by the two of them. "But I swear to you, Starscream, if you—"

"Oh, think about it, _idiot_ ," Starscream replied scathingly, throwing his shoulders back and flexing his wings in annoyance. "I need her. You've all seen that, much to my utter humiliation. I need her alive and well and _not_ in Megatron's hands, and I'd _prefer_ it if he didn't have a chance to _defile her_. So for the moment our interests overlap nicely, wouldn't you say?"

Prime glared at the Seeker. An equally scathing and condescending response to what he'd said immediately leaped to his mind, but there was a time and place for everything. Now was neither the time nor the place to get into a protracted sniping session with Starscream, who was a master of such things. So, instead, Prime sighed, but the look that he gave Starscream let the Seeker know in no uncertain terms that his tone was not at all appreciated.

"I suppose so," Optimus said to him frigidly, and Starscream at least had the grace to look somewhat chastened. "So all we need now," he added with a significant look at Prowl, "is a plan."

Prowl nodded in acknowledgment.

"Tell me about this outpost," he said, turning to face Starscream.

Nodding, knowing that Prowl would need as much detail as possible, Starscream took a moment to recall the outpost in question and then began, "It's small, meant to be staffed by no more than five or six. It's not heavily fortified. It served as a listening post, and it was built about ten years ago when we were closely monitoring the Chinese government."

"Why?" Optimus Prime interjected.

"That's not important," Starscream growled, not even bothering to look at Optimus. Then he continued, "It has a control room, some storage rooms, and some living quarters, all in a simple radial layout with the control room as the hub. All of its valuable equipment was removed and redistributed a few years ago, including automated security and all of its communications and sensor systems. There's just the basic structure left, more or less, and I doubt that Megatron would have had the chance to re-equip it yet, if he intends to do so at all." Prowl nodded and Starscream continued, "Overall, the installation itself shouldn't present a problem…once we get to it."

"What do you mean?" Optimus Prime asked.

"The environment is hostile," Starscream answered. "Which is mostly why it wasn't deemed necessary to heavily fortify it. It'll be especially hostile now, in the middle of winter, frigid, and the winds are…" His wings shivered demonstratively as his voice trailed off, and then he finished, "The winds coming down off the Himalayas are brutal this time of year. Plus, there are no roads in the area and the terrain is virtually unnavigable, so you grounders will have difficulty. I would suggest bringing those with sturdier alternate forms and anyone who can both fly and fight well."

Prime nodded, agreeing. Then a thought occurred to him, and he said, "We have a few jet packs available, as well. Perhaps we shouldn't approach by ground at all, if we can equip anyone who doesn't already have flight capability."

Starscream thought about that for a moment and then said, slowly, "The winds are very tricky, especially for those who are…inexperienced." He paused, his eyes narrowing calculatingly, and then added, "But if your packs are able to maintain enough altitude to stay above them until the last possible moment, that might be the best option, yes." Addressing Prowl with a significant look, he finished, "The outpost is situated on a small rise overlooking a flat and wide-open plain. There's no cover whatsoever for a ground approach even if you wanted to try one."

Prowl grimaced unhappily. "And even approaching by air, we will be spotted quickly," he concluded.

"And from very far away," Starscream confirmed with a grim nod. "If they're looking, that is, and perhaps they won't be."

Prowl frowned at Starscream for a moment but then nodded in comprehension half a second later.

"Because," he said, "Megatron has no reason to suspect that we would know where he is."

"Exactly," Starscream answered with a sly grin. "He knows that I'm still imprinted on Swoop, or at least that I was when I left, but—"

"But," Prowl surmised, a faint echoing smile on his face as he finished Starscream's thought, "he has no reason to believe that you're here, much less cooperating with us. So perhaps they will deem a sentry unnecessary."

"Perhaps," Starscream agreed with a nod.

Optimus Prime put in, "I imagine that Megatron will not want Swoop's status widely known. That, in addition to the size of the outpost, would tend to keep the number of personnel present small, as well."

Starscream nodded at that, too. "Most likely, yes, on both counts. Megatron's already killed everyone who was on the bridge at Headquarters when Ratchet called us about Swoop's condition," he said, matter-of-fact. "Except Soundwave and I, of course," he added offhandedly.

"He did _what_?" Optimus Prime responded, shock evident in his voice where it wasn't so evident on his masked face. "Why?"

Starscream sighed at that, hesitated over whether or not to say what he was going to say, and then sighed a mental _Frag it_ and answered, "There is dissension in the ranks, and no, not just from me. It's been brewing for a long time and for a number of reasons, some of which are _his_ fault," he said, jerking a thumb at Prowl, who gave Starscream a displeased frown but didn't contradict him. 

Optimus nodded solemnly at that and concluded, "And the awakening of a new queen would exacerbate that dissension."

"Yes," Starscream confirmed. "Probably to the point of outright mutiny, which is why Megatron ordered me to kill Swoop. Which I, obviously, chose not to do because that would have been _stupid_. You can all thank me later." Optimus snorted at that, but Starscream continued before he could say anything. "Megatron knows that he's on shaky ground, and he gets more paranoid by the day, so in his mind losing a few warriors was a better option than those warriors gossiping about what they'd heard. After all," he added with a sidelong glance at Prowl, "Megatron doesn't think as clearly as he used to these days."

Optimus glanced between Prowl and Starscream for a long moment, understanding what Starscream meant more than any non-warrior would. 

"So," Prime said, "he has a strong vested interest in suppressing knowledge of Swoop 's status. But Soundwave knows."

"Yes," Starscream answered. "And that means that Soundwave's annoying little minions know, of course. No one else, though, as far as I know."

"Which means," Prowl put in, "that Soundwave and his annoying little minions are likely to be the only ones at the outpost with Megatron."

Starscream shrugged and answered, "Maybe. Or Soundwave might be back at Headquarters. He's the only person that Megatron trusts these days, so he might want him there to keep everyone in line. You know, since he's gone, I'm gone, and," he said with a glower at Prowl, " _you're_ gone."

Prowl glowered back at him, his fists planted on his hips, and sniped, "I'm so happy to hear that you just can't do without me, Starscream."

"Hah!" Starscream scoffed. " _I_ can do perfectly well without you, traitor. Megatron, on the other hand...?"

Prowl opened his mouth to answer, but fire and smoke and an impatient Dinobot spewing more of both suddenly planted himself between them and roared, "This is not helping! _Shut up_ , both of you!"

Prowl and Starscream, surprised into silence, exchanged a glance between them and then stared wordlessly up at Slag. 

Optimus Prime, after a brief internal war between amusement and irritation that amusement eventually won, gave Slag a look that was partly approving and partly quelling and then agreed, "Yes, we _do_ have a queen to rescue and all."

That chastened Prowl, at least. Starscream merely harrumphed, eyeing Slag apprehensively.

"Yes, we do," he said, edging away from Slag again. "So as I was saying, Soundwave might or might not be there, and if he is there, he may or may not have all or some of his minions with him. Megatron might also have some cannon fodder with him that he'll destroy if he deems it necessary to do so. It would be individuals that he can keep isolated from everyone else so that they can't spread the word, as it were. Which means they won't be Seekers because we're hard to iso--"

Starscream's voice cut off abruptly, a deeply pained crossed his face, and he staggered suddenly. Without thinking about it, Optimus Prime stood up from his desk-lean and reached out to steady him. He expected Starscream to pull away from him immediately, but he instead leaned into the support with a groan and just...trembled.

"Are you all right?" Optimus murmured at him after a long moment that Starscream spent trying to collect himself.

Starscream nodded, but his voice was very shaky when he answered, " _I'm_ fine. But Thundercracker isn't."

"Thundercracker?" Prime echoed.

Starscream made a weak scoffing noise and waved vaguely at his own head when he answered, "Hello? Linked? I keep my side of the trinelink closed except when we're in combat, but this is...this is strong enough to...he's reaching out, and he's...I can't..."

Ratchet pushed himself out of his corner then and moved quickly to pick up the chair from behind Optimus Prime's desk. He brought it over to Optimus and Starscream because it looked like Starscream was about to keel over.

"Here," Optimus said, once Ratchet had set the chair nearby. He steered the Seeker toward it and said, "Sit down before you fall down, Starscream."

Starscream obediently collapsed into the chair, folding almost double in it, his arms wrapped tightly around his abdomen, wings still trembling. Ratchet crouched down next to him, automatically running scans.

"I'm _fine_ ," Starscream growled at the medic. "It's just bleed-through."

"Well, excuse me," Ratchet sniped, continuing to scan anyway, if only to spite Starscream. "It's not as if I have much cause to treat one of a trine these days. And it's not like Thundercracker's here for me to scan."

Starscream heaved a shaky sigh at that, making a visible effort to calm himself. After a long moment, he sat back in the chair, looking more composed on the outside, but there were still telling hitches in the clipped phrases he used when he answered, "No, he isn't. He's there, too. The same place Swoop is. Someone's hurting him. Very badly."

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" Ratchet asked him quietly.

Starscream shook his head sharply and answered, "No, just...Just give me a minute to try to lock down the link. I need to think straight, and this...I can't think with this in my head. Skywarp's better with him, anyway..."

Meanwhile, Snarl approached them, and he gave Prowl an odd, perhaps angry, look before saying quietly to him, "Swoop went to see Thundercracker. _You_ know why."

Prowl closed his eyes at that news, dismayed. Grimlock, meanwhile, swept toward Snarl like a storm cloud and they stood toe to toe, glaring at each other. 

"And you thought it was a good idea to let her go _alone_?" Grimlock demanded of Snarl.

"She wouldn't let me go with her!" Snarl growled back and shoved Grimlock away, unimpressed as always with his aggression. "I tried, but you know how she gets. Besides, she said that _Prowl_ said that the communication frequency was secure," he added with an accusing look at the tactician before sneering and finishing, "Not so much, it seems." His gaze flickered toward Starscream for a moment, who was still sagging in his chair.

Optimus watched the exchange before leveling a look at Prowl and then at Snarl, and saying, "Share with the class, you two."

Snarl just glared at him, complete with a teeth-baring sneer, while Prowl heaved a long sigh and said, "It's a very long story, one that I'll be happy to relate when we have our queen back. Until then, it's not really relevant."

At that, Optimus drew himself up to his full, impressive height, crossed his arms over his chest, and rumbled, "Not really relevant? It's not really relevant that Swoop is apparently chatting with Decepticons on a not-quite-secure communications frequency? Or that _you_ have been?"

Prowl bristled at the accusing tone, his door panels rising high behind his shoulders in irritation. " _I_ have not been," he asserted. "But a few days ago, because _someone_ ," he said, jerking his chin at Starscream, "pushed her into asking questions of me, I did tell Swoop about some things that happened on the day of the Uprising, about how her spark ended up separated from her body and put into a stasis vault."

"I _knew_ it!" Starscream exclaimed suddenly, jerking upright and then pushing himself half out of his chair before wincing and collapsing back into it. He nearly crushed the armrests in his grip as he growled, "I _knew_ that you--"

Prowl turned to him with a very stern look on his face and said, "As usual, _you_ know very little, Starscream. Be _silent_." Starscream abruptly closed his mouth, and Prowl turned back to Optimus Prime. "Thundercracker had a hand in those events for--"

"What?" Starscream interrupted in a choked voice.

"Yes, you and he have some catching up to do," Prowl said dryly to Starscream, though he didn't look at the Seeker. Instead, he said to Optimus Prime, "Thundercracker had a hand in those events for reasons that I could not divulge to Swoop, so I gave her a communications frequency that should have been secure so that she could contact him if she chose to do so. Apparently, it wasn't as secure as I thought."

"You think?" Starscream sniped sarcastically. "Soundwave isn't _stupid_ , you know."

Prowl spun back to him then and said levelly, "Did I not tell you to be silent?"

"Swoop called him," Snarl said then, taking up the narrative in his customary laconic way while Prowl and Starscream were busy glaring daggers at each other. "They arranged to meet. Swoop left last night."

"So we can assume that Megatron caught them together. And apparently," Optimus said, his gaze sliding toward Starscream, "he's unhappy with Thundercracker."

"He probably wants to know why they were meeting," Starscream said, looking away from Prowl. "And knowing Thundercracker as I do, he won't tell him willingly." And then he winced as a flare of agony and an answering wave of ever-increasing panic from Skywarp rippled through the trinelink, both strong enough to dent his own control. He re-fixed his glare on Prowl, to distract himself if nothing else, and said, "I'd like to know why they were meeting, too."

"As would I," Optimus put in, leveling his own narrow-eyed look on Prowl. "You said that you couldn't divulge to Swoop the reasons for Thundercracker's involvement in whatever happened during the Uprising. Why not?"

"Because his reasons were personal," Prowl answered calmly, "and it wasn't my place to divulge them."

"So...what? You thought it a better idea to put _our queen_ in danger instead?" Optimus demanded, suddenly outraged. "You had to have known that she'd contact him."

"I calculated the probability that she would contact him at roughly eighty percent, yes," Prowl responded evenly. "But it would have been one hundred percent had I told her the reason for Thundercracker's interest."

Starscream successfully pushed himself out of his chair this time, and he approached Prowl only slightly unsteadily. The trinelink was nothing but a distracting jumble of pain, confusion, and chaos on all three of its axes, but he'd managed to block out the cacophony as much as he could. It was enough to function. Enough to think.

" _Why_?" he demanded of Prowl.

Prowl deliberated for a long moment, but realized that there really wasn't much point to keeping the secret anymore. Once they rescued Swoop -- and perhaps Thundercracker, as well -- the secret would be out, anyway.

"Because," he answered Starscream simply, "she is his daughter, and he feels a very unusual level of attachment to her. He disagreed with Megatron's plan for her future and sought to give her a better one."

For the first time in his long life, Starscream was shocked into speechlessness. Not a single word, sarcastic or otherwise, occurred to him. Everyone, even the Dinobots, seemed to be in a similar state for a long moment. It was Ratchet who finally broke the silence.

"Dear sweet Primus," he murmured, burying his face in his hands for a long moment. And then he approached Prowl with clear irritation dominating his expression. "And you knew this all along?"

"I've known that Eclipse was Thundercracker's daughter since shortly before the Uprising, yes," Prowl answered evenly. "Obviously, I had no idea that Swoop was Eclipse until she started showing obvious signs of awakening."

"And at that point you didn't think it important to...oh, I don't know... _tell me_?" Ratchet shouted. "Especially when she came close to _dying_?"

Prowl's brow furrowed, genuinely puzzled, and he asked in return, "Would information about her father's identity have made any difference, at the time?"

"Yes!" Ratchet automatically answered. "No! Probably not!"

"There you are, then," Prowl said with a satisfied nod. 

Ratchet didn't seem mollified. Grumbling to himself, he paced away from Prowl, as if he didn't trust himself not to do something he'd regret later if he stayed too close to the tactician. Grimlock scooted closer to him, perhaps to offer his assistance should he decide to throttle Prowl after all.

Optimus Prime, meanwhile, made a displeased noise and hitched himself up onto his desk. His gaze bored into Prowl as he said, "You know, when you joined us, Prowl, part of the deal was information."

Prowl narrowed his eyes at that. "I gave you all the _relevant_ information that I had at the time," he answered stiffly.

"Mmmm," Optimus rumbled. "Once we have our queen back, you and I are going to have a discussion about your definition of the word relevant."

Starscream snorted at that and muttered, "Good luck with that."

Optimus gave Starscream an almost amused look and answered, "Weren't you told to be silent?"

Starscream lifted his chin haughtily, looked down his nose at Optimus, and snottily retorted, "Fine." He paced around the little space that existed in the room, ending up standing next to Snarl. "I'll be silent and you can all stand around talking. While you blather on incessantly, I'll go get my weapons and then Snarl and I will go get Swoop out of Megatron's hands and maybe see if my trinemate is still alive while we're at it." He looked up into Swoop's brother's face and cracked a cocky grin. "Between the two of us, I'm sure we can manage just fine." 

Snarl actually smiled in return and made a happy little noise, bouncing on his heels in anticipation, while Prowl leveled a narrow-eyed look at Starscream.

Starscream answered Prowl's unspoken question, his own eyes wide with exaggerated innocence. "I promised him. You wouldn't want me to break my promise, now would you, Prowl?"

"Why on Earth did you—?" Prowl began, annoyed, but then interrupted himself. "No, never mind. I don't want to know."

"Good," Starscream said with a taunting smile. "Because I wouldn't tell you anyway." He turned back to Optimus then and asked imperiously, "So, are Snarl and I heading off to Mongolia, or do you want my help?"

Optimus Prime sighed, aimed a glance heavenward, and said, "I'm probably going to regret this later, but I want your help. But," he added, spearing both Prowl and Starscream with a warning look, "no more picking at each other, you two. Or else I'll let Slag fry _both_ of you."

"Heh," Slag uttered with a smirk. He was pulled up to his full height, nearly the equal of Grimlock's. His stance was wide, shoulders back, his arms crossed over his massive chest, and when Starscream and Prowl turned to look at him, he returned their look smugly and let a few larger jets of fire spew from all of the vents in various places on his body. It was very impressive.

Starscream shuddered at the display, but then he gave Prowl an almost amused look. "They do come in handy, don't they?" he observed.

Prowl sighed wearily. "When they're in a cooperative mood, yes," he said, giving Slag his best bland look, completely unimpressed with the Dinobot's pyrotechnic theatrics. And then he qualified, " _Sometimes_."

" _All_ the time," Grimlock corrected him with a weary snort. "Now, less talking, more planning."

"Right," Optimus agreed. "So, personnel, then..."

And as they fell to hurriedly planning a rescue mission, Starscream felt compelled to murmur at Prowl, "Just like old times, eh Prowl?"

Prowl only grimaced in response, but Starscream could have sworn that it was an almost nostalgic grimace.


	18. Into the Fire

Swoop awoke to the sound of fiercely howling wind. The small and dimly-lit room to which she awoke was bitingly cold, and she could feel even colder drafts playing over her body with every renewed gust of wind outside. The floor on which she was lying consisted of frigid plates of sickeningly familiar purple-grey metal.

Wherever she was, the walls were thin, and it was very cold outside.

Cold was always her nemesis, and she was already so cold that thinking was difficult. She knew that moving would be a chore, but it was a necessary one. Still, for a while, an almost pleasant while, she couldn't remember quite what had happened…until it all came back to her with all the crashing insistence of a tidal wave, and she tried to jerk upright in alarm.

Her attempt was largely unsuccessful because she was chained rather securely, lying awkwardly on her side. One of her wings had been wrenched painfully backward in order to allow the position. Whoever had put her there hadn't bothered to try to figure out how the wing folded, and it was howling at her. Her hands were secured behind her back, her forearms shackled together. That set of shackles was connected by a very short chain to similar shackles that secured her ankles. This forced her knees into a deep bend and her back into an uncomfortable arch, and her entire half-frozen body was stiff and vehemently protested movement, which told her that she'd been trussed up in that position and left in this frigid little room for quite some time. When she tried to move, the tight shackles bit painfully into her limbs, but other than the wrenched wing, she appeared to be unhurt. It wasn't surprising since she knew that Megatron wanted her unharmed. Otherwise, she never would have woken up at all.

As if on cue, as if thinking about him had summoned him, the door to the room creaked open, and both Soundwave and Megatron entered. Megatron moved to stand in front of Swoop, glaring down at her with his arms folded over his chest. Soundwave moved around behind her, crouching down and pulling at her until she was sitting uncomfortably half-upright, her back still arched and all of her weight resting on the side of her dully aching hip. She tried to think of something taunting to say, but nothing came to her. She was afraid, truly, deeply afraid, and the fear was, for the moment, blocking her wit. So it was Megatron who spoke first.

"Well," he said, almost mildly. "Welcome back."

Swoop didn't answer for a long moment. She just stared up at him with an expression that she hoped spoke of defiance and not of the fear that was shamefully roiling its way through her. Finally, she asked, somehow managing to keep her voice level, "Why have you brought me here?"

At that, Megatron laughed. It was a genuinely amused laugh, but there was a nasty edge to it, one that Swoop knew did not bode well for her.

"Oh, I just thought that we should have a little talk, my queen," he answered, the honorific decidedly sarcastic. "Besides that which we had on that lovely beach, of course. Something a little more…private."

"A talk," Swoop echoed dully.

"Yes," Megatron answered agreeably.

"About how you've come to your senses and now wish to humbly devote your life to my service?" she asked, sarcasm apparently rising to the surface despite herself.

Megatron's eyes narrowed and glowed at her dangerously in response, and he crouched down so that, suddenly, they were more or less eye-to-eye.

"Don't flatter yourself, you primitive, half-animal _filth_ ," Megatron snarled into her face.

"Oh! So you brought me here to listen to insults that I've heard a billion times already?" Swoop asked impudently, resisting the urge to jerk away from him and leaning into him instead. "Booooring!" she sing-songed right into his face. 

Which earned her a sharp backhand against her cheek that was forceful enough to make her see stars.

"Insolent child," Megatron snarled distastefully as she fell sideways. "It will be a distinct pleasure to teach you to mind your manners."

Not having any hands free to break her fall, Swoop fell on her wing instead. Already damaged and wrenched, it strongly protested having to bear the brunt of her fall, sharp pain singing along its entire width, but she clenched her jaw so as not to make a sound. She was determined that she would not give Megatron the satisfaction of any kind of reaction to whatever he did to her. And then, before she could think further, she was hauled roughly upright again, and Megatron's glowering face was suddenly in hers again. His eyes flared menacingly as he lowered his voice to a disturbingly greasy level.

"I think you know exactly why I brought you here, my dear," he oozed, the sarcasm practically dripping from the endearment. "You require a successor, do you not? We can't have the royal line dying out, now can we?" Glancing down at her body, he traced the deep curve of her waist to her hip, exaggerated as it was due to her position, with one finger. Clenching her jaw again so as to remain silent, Swoop fought not to jerk away from Megatron's touch, since she was fairly certain that that was what he wanted her to do. "And at least the Autobots seem to have made you a bit less hideous for the occasion," he taunted.

She snorted at that and glowered at him. Emboldened, leaning toward him so that their faces were even closer than they had been, she spat at him venomously, "I would rather _die_ , Megatron."

Megatron chuckled in obvious amusement, not moving in the slightest otherwise.

"Under normal circumstances, little queen, I would say that that could quite happily be arranged," he said. He raised a hand then to stroke her cheek with the backs of his fingers, the gesture all mocking gentleness, as he added, "But we both know that's not an option here, do we not?"

Swoop growled wordlessly in response, resisting a strong urge to turn her head and tear into his hand with her teeth. Megatron ignored her, was still busy listening to the sound of his own voice.

"Rather," he was musing, lowering his voice even more, as he leisurely moved his hand so that his fingertips trailed lightly along Swoop's jaw line and then down the length of her throat, "we simply need to make you a bit more…amenable to reason."

And before she could respond to that, Megatron was suddenly straightening from his crouch, towering over her again. "If you please, Soundwave," he said mildly, but his gaze was still menacing, and it was still entirely and venomously focused on Swoop as she stared up in confusion at him.

Soundwave's hands were suddenly on her then, meaning that the one he'd been using to hold her up was no longer supporting her. The distribution of her weight was such that she was forced to lean back against Soundwave or otherwise collapse onto her painfully-damaged wing again. She was certain that this was intentional on Soundwave's part. His probing was impersonal and not at all sensuous. He was merely searching for something. And there was only one thing, Swoop realized, that he could be searching for.

An interface port.

Terror slammed full-force into her then. She was very aware of Soundwave's legendary talents at hacking, but she tried her best not to show any sign of fear, staring mutely but angrily up at Megatron instead, doing her best to ignore Soundwave's touch, helpless as she was to prevent it.

"You know, if your little _pet_ was here," Megatron spat scathingly as he impassively watched Soundwave poke parts of her body that he had no business poking, "I would simply have him nullify you. But since he isn't here because you made him – and Thundercracker, it seems – go insane, I'm afraid that I've decided to use a somewhat more creative approach. So remember that you have only yourself and your pet to blame for everything that is going to happen to you here, dear Swoop."

And that was when Soundwave found the port that he wanted, the primary one that allowed access to all of her core programming. It was situated high on her chest, dangerously near to her spark chamber. Soundwave unceremoniously wrenched off the small, thick armor plate that protected it, forcing Swoop to bite down into her lip to prevent a pained and shamefully terrified cry from escaping. A mass of snaky cables extended from his wrist, and Soundwave unceremoniously jacked into Swoop. She shuddered, knowing that he would be making an attempt to access her core programming and also knowing that, despite the layers of security measures that protected that level of her being, he would succeed. And given Soundwave's talents, it likely wouldn't take him long to accomplish whatever he was seeking to accomplish.

Megatron saw the shudder that ran through Swoop, and he smiled down at her, sarcastically benevolent in his triumph.

"Really, though, you should be thankful," Megatron said to Swoop scathingly as a strange heat begin to radiate from the port to which Soundwave was linked, spreading quickly across her chest, up into her shoulders, and down into the rest of her torso. She felt the pulsing of her spark increase in speed. Whether this was out of fear or because of whatever it was that Soundwave was doing to her she didn't know. The heat might have been pleasant, given her otherwise frigid surroundings, if she hadn't known that it was likely a harbinger of very bad things to come.

"I could simply force you, take you right now in this lovely little room and just as you are, all charmingly full of fight and _fear_ ," Megatron was continuing meanwhile. He smirked mockingly at the murderous look that Swoop gave him. "It would be utterly delicious. But," he added with an airy, mock-regretful sigh, "I daresay that this way might be even more delicious."

Then, suddenly, he was crouching down again, in Swoop's face again, one hand coming up to grab her chin roughly and then using the grip to wrench her head backward. This time, she couldn't hold back the little grunt of discomfort that emerged from her.

"You will _beg_ for me to take you, pathetic little queen," Megatron savagely promised her. "You will _scream_ for me."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she snarled back at him. "So not going to happen," she promised him.

He didn't respond, instead exchanging an amused look with Soundwave behind her. Whatever Soundwave silently communicated to him, it made Megatron nod and then smirk with satisfaction.

"Well," he said, almost cheerfully, giving Swoop a terrifying smile, "we'll see if you've changed your tune in about…oh…four hours or so."

A deep and powerful dread overcame Swoop, particularly when Soundwave disengaged himself from her. His mission was apparently accomplished, which was very bad news for her. The realization of this must have shown on her face, for all that she had been trying to hide her fear.

"There, there," Megatron soothed her mockingly, caressing her face with obscene gentleness. "There's no need for fear, little one. You might even enjoy this." He leaned closer to her then, whispered in tones that were at once menacing and lascivious, "I know you're going to want it, at least."

And then, because he could, bound and tightly sandwiched as she was between him and Soundwave, Megatron leaned into her and kissed her. There was nothing gentle in the gesture. No passion, even. There was only dominance. Possessiveness. Victory. Swoop stiffened, involuntarily pressing herself back against Soundwave, not knowing what to do for a long and terrible moment…and then she finally took the opportunity to bite him, teeth grabbing and then ripping savagely into Megatron's lower lip. Megatron didn't make a sound, but he did pull back from her in order to slap her again, hard. He was smiling, though, as he dabbed at his chin with the back of one hand.

"I can only hope," he said to her with obvious amusement as she worked her aching jaw, "that you'll still be this feisty a little later on."

He wanted her to fight him, Swoop then realized. He wanted this encounter that he was gleefully planning to be brutal, rough, and he apparently wanted her to want him, enough so to go to the trouble of having Soundwave manipulate her core programming in order to make that happen. This left Swoop in an odd position. She wanted to fight Megatron, but at the same time, she didn't want to give him anything that he wanted. And he wanted her to fight, so that left…not fighting. It left submitting meekly to him, doing everything that he didn't want her to do, in order to frustrate his desire for a fight. It was unthinkable. Her position was untenable.

But there was nothing that she could do about it. She could already feel the initial effects of whatever it was that Soundwave had done to her. Her senses were rapidly distorting. Insistent fire was licking its way through her body, heat building up such that she was already feeling a need to pant. She restrained the impulse as well as she could, but she knew what it meant. She'd experienced it before. Whatever Soundwave had done to her, it was fast becoming apparent that its purpose was to bring about a similar kind of situation. Only this time her energies would apparently be focused on Megatron. Things were looking bad. Very bad.

"Until then," Megatron was saying cheerfully, meanwhile, "enjoy your luxurious accommodations, my queen."

And then he was standing up and heading for the door. Soundwave rose, too, to follow him, leaving Swoop to fall back on the floor, damaged wing bending and scraping and screeching against the floor's cold plates of metal, sending her insistent pain signals that she hardly felt. The room's door creaked and clanged shut and then locked behind the two Decepticons with ominous and ringing finality, leaving Swoop to burn in frigid solitude.


	19. Karma, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took longer than I expected. :{ Failing health sucks.
> 
> Anyway, the rewrite of this chapter expanded it to about 11,000 words instead of the original ~4000. Oops? But I felt that it needed it, 'cuz I originally glossed over a lot of stuff. So, this one chapter became two because I'm trying to keep them to about 5000 words or less. Plus, I _think_ there'll be one entirely new chapter, so I've upped the chapter count on this accordingly, to 24 chapters instead of 22.
> 
> Expanding the chapter and adding a bit of action (something that I suck at, so....yeah) also meant adding a few characters who didn't originally appear in this story, so there are some new character tags. Skywarp wasn't supposed to appear in this continuity until later, but I had a devious idea that completely changed what I'm going to do with him, so I decided to bring him in earlier. Trine togetherness, yay? And there are also a few new content tags. Ouch. The things I do to my favorite characters... ;)

Even if the lone blip on the edge of his scanning range hadn't been broadcasting a Decepticon identity code, Starscream would have known who it was. It wasn't as if it could be anyone else. Opening up both the trinelink and the trine's comm channel, he said mildly, "You're rather far from Headquarters, Skywarp."

"I could say the same to you, Screamer," was Skywarp's disdainful reply. "Where the _fuck_ have you been?"

"Oh, here and there," Starscream answered evasively. "You got Thundercracker's message," he added, to discourage further questions.

Skywarp snorted at that. "As if I wouldn't," he answered. "I'm just surprised _you_ did. And that you care."

"I care," Starscream answered simply. "That's why I'm going to get him. And why I brought...er, friends."

There was a pause as Skywarp no doubt did some scanning of his own. Starscream waited and, sure enough, a moment later Skywarp squawked, "Holy shit, Screamer, you're bringing _Autobots_?! What... _why_? What the ever-loving _fuck_ is going on here?"

"It's a very long story," Starscream answered, as always ignoring Skywarp's drama. "Suffice it to say that we have much catching up to do, the three of us. But first, we have a queen to rescue."

"Wewhattawoo...What...?" Skywarp spluttered. "We have a _what_ now?"

Starscream suppressed a snicker at his trinemate's expense and said, simply, "You heard me."

"No, I don't think I did," Skywarp replied, befuddlement clear in his voice.

"You did," Starscream confirmed as he pinged Skywarp the comm frequency that the raiding party was using while simultaneously projecting across the trinelink reassurance, sincerity, and a promise to explain everything. Later. "But there's no time to catch up now," he said over the comm. "Just get your aft over here." Skywarp started to protest at that, but Starscream spoke over him. "Better that you join our party," he said, "than go off and make your own. You might mess up Prowl's brilliant plan, after all," he added lightly.

"Prowl's...? Ah, fuck it," Skywarp grumbled, and Starscream watched as the blip on his scanners that represented his trinemate sharply banked in his direction and then sped up dramatically as he kicked in his afterburners. Once he was within teleporting range, there was a flash of purple and Skywarp was settling himself into his customary place just off of and behind Starscream's left wing, which consequently meant fitting himself neatly next to Silverbolt, who'd been tagged to play taxi for their jaunt in lieu of the non-flyers using jetpacks. The packs were too slow and, ultimately, too short-range. It was also certain that they'd incur some casualties who would need return transport anyway. At the very least, Thundercracker had already made the casualty list. 

"I might have known you'd show up, Skywarp," Prowl's voice suddenly sounded over the raiding party's comm channel.

"Yeah, well, you know me, Prowl," Skywarp quipped. "Always up for a party."

"Funny," Prowl answered. "I thought that only applied to parties that included copious quantities of high-grade."

"I'll make an exception this time," Skywarp answered. "Since it might give me a chance to rip your head off," he added with a growl.

Starscream knew that, for once, that wasn't an empty threat from Skywarp, that he would do exactly as he'd said if given half a chance and for all sorts of reasons. But for the moment, the sentiment was counterproductive.

"Play nice, boys," Starscream cheerily singsonged. _For now_ , he added over the trine's comm channel, for Skywarp's audios only. _Feel free to do whatever you like once this is done, though. I might even help_ , he added, almost brightly. Skywarp didn't answer, but he did send a sense of reluctant agreement over the trinelink. Starscream switched back to the general channel to say, "And never mind our illustrious Second's lack of enthusiasm, Skywarp. Your teleporting capability will make things much easier."

Skywarp made a doubtful sound at that, answering, "Sorry, but I'm thinking not. At least not right away."

"What do you mean?" Prowl asked.

"A few hours ago," Skywarp answered, sounding resigned, "Laserbeak came back to Headquarters from somewhere, and he was in a big hurry. He grabbed a force field generator. That big one, y'know?" 

"The one that's powerful enough to shield the entire outpost that we're headed for?" Starscream glumly asked. 

"That's the one," Skywarp answered. "And then he turned right around and left again. So, I'm guessing it's been activated by now, which means that none of us is going to be getting into that outpost until it's deactivated."

"Fuck," Starscream responded with heartfelt dismay.

"Stop stealing my fucking lines, Screamer," Skywarp muttered.

"Well, then," Prowl put in over Skywarp's muttering, sounding nothing if not smug. "It's a good thing we brought Special Ops with us after all. Isn't that right, Starscream?"

"Oh, shut up," Starscream grumbled. That had been an argument he'd lost, one that he'd made mostly because the Autobots' Special Ops team, Mirage in particular, creeped him out. He didn't trust them as far as a human could throw them. Not that he really trusted any of the Autobots, but those? Those he especially didn't trust. And now they'd all have to _rely_ on them. It didn't sit well with him.

A few moments passed, during which Prowl was apparently revising his plan, because when he spoke up again he said, "Much as I hate to admit it, it is good that you're here, Skywarp." 

"Because I'm just that awesome?" Skywarp brightly interjected.

"Hardly," Prowl scoffed. "It will simply save us time. Jazz is confident that he can deactivate a small window in the force field. Since you must know where he is, you can go in to extract Thundercracker. Jazz and Mirage will accompany you. You and Jazz will find Thundercracker and get him out while Mirage locates and disables the field generator. Once that's down, Starscream can lead the raiding party to Swoop's location."

If he could have, Skywarp would have done a double-take at that last bit. "Swoop?" he asked. "The Dinobot?"

"Yes," Starscream answered. "And our new queen," he added with amusement in his voice.

"But...but... _what_?" Skywarp sputtered. "He's..."

" _He_ is a _she_ ," Prowl put in, "and she used to be known as Eclipse." 

Skywarp puzzled over the name for a moment, but then the light dawned and he protested, "She's dead!"

"She got better," Starscream archly put in. "And you haven't even heard the best part yet, but we'll leave that for later. You just concentrate on finding Thundercracker and getting him out of there." It was better to give Skywarp one task and one thing to think about at a time.

Skywarp sighed, grudgingly put aside raging curiosity, and asked, "How are we supposed to get close enough to the outpost to get in without being seen?" 

"Hound is here," Prowl answered in Starscream's stead. "Silverbolt's going to land about three kilometers from the outpost. Hound will maneuver halfway between Silverbolt's location and the outpost and then create and maintain holographic camouflage for as long as he can. Given the size of the projection he'll have to create, he won't have the energy to maintain it for long, but it should be enough to get Mirage in to disable the force field as well as to get Starscream's party, who all have flight capability, into position. After that, it will no longer matter if we're seen. If you can teleport Jazz and Mirage into position just outside the force field barrier, that will give us extra time as well."

Skywarp checked his energy levels. Since he'd had no idea if or when he'd be able to return, he'd taken the time to fully fuel up before he'd left Decepticon Headquarters as well as to snitch the few extra cubes that he was now carrying in subspace, but it wasn't as if the Decepticons' fuel supply was high-quality, and his teleporting capability ate a lot of energy. It was even more resource-intensive if he teleported more than just his own mass, which he was apparently going to have to do and, to add insult to injury, it was going to be over a distance close to his field generator's maximum range. Still, what he had should be enough to get the job done.

"I can do that," he answered confidently.

"Excellent," Prowl responded.

Minutes later, Silverbolt had located a large-enough flat area for him to both land and subsequently take off from when their mission was complete. It was closer to four kilometers from the outpost, which uncomfortably butted up against the limits of Skywarp's teleportation ability, but it was the best they could do between the treacherous terrain below and the need to be at some distance from the outpost. The area also had a small degree of cover, with a low, scrub-covered ridge between the landing site and the Decepticon outpost. They'd still be seen landing if anyone happened to be looking, but if no one was, then the ridge was a meager bit of extra protection from prying eyes.

Since it afforded a bit more control, Starscream and Skywarp transformed as they headed down to land. Even so, the wind was howling off and on, pushing and pulling at them and making the blindingly sunny but frigid day seem even colder. Silverbolt was forced to land in jet form on the uneven terrain and, despite themselves, the two Seekers winced in sympathy as Silverbolt came down gracelessly, fighting the brutal winds all the way and then bumping roughly along the rocky ground until his brakes caught and he managed to come to a halt, fishtailing wildly and drowning in a cloud of gritty dust that had to be murder on his turbines. Most of his passengers disembarked as quickly as they could, but Silverbolt remained in jet mode. He and First Aid would be hanging back, and First Aid stayed aboard Silverbolt to ready supplies and equipment for casualties. 

The rest of the Autobot members of the party -- Prowl, Jazz, Mirage, Snarl, Sideswipe, Ratchet, and Hound -- clustered around Prowl, and Starscream and Skywarp moved to join them. As the two Seekers joined the Autobot group, Ratchet was fussing over Hound, running a scanner over him. Hound appeared to be enduring the fussing with resigned grace.

"I told you I'm good to go, Ratchet," Hound insisted to the medic. "If I fuel up any more, I'm going to burst at the seams."

"You have the extra on you?" Ratchet asked, ignoring Hound's assurances while he continued to fuss.

"For the tenth time, yes, Ratchet," Hound answered patiently. "Enough to get me back here. I'm set. Let's get this show on the road."

Ratchet sighed, growled a worried, "Fine," under his breath, and stepped back from the scout.

"Signal when you're in position," Prowl said to Hound.

"Will do," Hound answered with an acknowledging nod and a cheerful grin, and, without further ado, he transformed and sped off to find a good position.

" _Try_ not to break an axle this time," Ratchet yelled after him. "I'm tired of welding you back together."

"No promises," Hound cheerfully answered over the comm, which made Ratchet scowl and grumble under his breath about crazy off-roaders and threats to his sanity as he watched the scout recede into the distance.

Hound's alternate form was made for the sort of terrain under his heavy-duty tires, and he leapt and bounced over it with both glee and balletic grace. Once he emerged from the cover of the hills, he threw up some holographic camouflage around himself that matched the surrounding terrain, hoping to disguise his approach. It wouldn't pass muster under inspection -- He wasn't Mirage, after all -- but it would do from a distance of a couple of kilometers, which was as close to the Decepticon outpost as he was going to get. Once he was in position, he'd create a similar but much larger hologram to disguise the surrounding, real terrain and sky and, thus, the rescue party for as long as he could. 

Five minutes later, Hound was in position, and a minute or so after that the camouflage was in place, looking as realistic as he could make it. There were obvious flaws in the image, but it was the best he could do. He and his comrades could only hope that no one would be looking closely. Once the hologram was up and running, Hound checked his diagnostics and found that, unfortunately, the illusion was draining him faster than he'd thought it would. Disheartened, he opened up his comm.

"All right, guys," Hound reported, "we're as good to go as we're going to get. This is going to suck me dry quickly, though. I estimate I can hold out for a half-hour, tops. Preferably more like twenty minutes."

"Copy that," Prowl answered, back at their rudimentary base camp. He gave Jazz and Mirage a look and said, "Go. _Quickly_."

"Right," Jazz acknowledged, then grabbed Mirage's arm and practically dragged him over to their ride. Mirage, perhaps understandably, tended to really hate warriors, but the situation at hand made for strange bedfellows, so Mirage would just have to deal. "So, we're with you," Jazz said once they were in Skywarp's vicinity.

"Oh, lucky me," Skywarp answered him sourly. "Are you ready for this?"

"Yup," Jazz answered and then made a "go ahead" gesture.

Skywarp smirked at that and said sardonically, "Well, if you're planning to come along with me, I'm afraid ya gotta be in physical contact. So grab on somewhere, both of you. Just...not the wings."

After exchanging a doubtful and, in Mirage's case, distasteful look, each Autobot grabbed onto one of Skywarp's arms while Skywarp busied himself with teleport calculations, which took him somewhat longer than they usually took since he had to estimate and then make adjustments for the extra mass he'd be toting along with him. The calculations were extraordinarily complex, so much so that the field generator had its own dedicated subprocessor. Which was a good thing, or else they'd be wasting time while Skywarp calculated.

"Good hunting," Starscream said to Skywarp, catching his eye and giving him an intense look just as Skywarp finished his calculations.

"Yeah, you too, Screamer," Skywarp answered with an equally intense look and an acknowledging flick of his wings. And then, in a flash of purple, he and his Autobot cargo disappeared.

* * * * * *

If Jazz never went through the teleportation process again, it would be too soon. Once rematerialized, he staggered away from Skywarp, dizzy and feeling equal parts nauseous and curiously lighter, as if he was somehow not quite all there, as if a small but noticeable percentage of his mass hadn't made it through the trip. It was very disconcerting. Mirage seemed to be in a similar condition, enough so that he was reduced to sitting abruptly on the dirty and dusty ground, which Jazz knew the royal would have never done if he wasn't feeling as completely unsettled as Jazz was.

"Now that's just _wrong_ on every possible level," Jazz muttered, and apparently it wasn't enough under his breath because Skywarp answered him.

"Yeah, I know," the Seeker agreed, unperturbed, "but it comes in handy and you get used to it." He paused, wrinkled his nose, and added, "Well, you get used to it _eventually_ , anyway."

"Ugh, I'd rather not, thanks," Jazz answered sourly.

"Hey, at least you're not puking--" Skywarp pointed out.

"Yet," Mirage pessimistically interjected.

"--which puts you _leagues_ ahead of Screamer," Skywarp finished with a jaunty grin.

Jazz had been heading unsteadily toward the subtly swirling force field barrier, but he paused to flash a look over his shoulder at Skywarp, brow quirking in amusement. "Really?"

"Oh yeah," Skywarp confirmed with a wide grin. "Puking like the fourth day of a three-day bender. Every time. Not a pretty sight. Also, bitching like you wouldn't believe."

Jazz chuckled, filing away the bit of possible teasing/blackmail material for future use. "Oh, trust me," he said. "I'd believe. And that... Well, that actually _does_ make me feel a little better."

"Figured it would," Skywarp answered with a smirk. 

He and Mirage both watched as Jazz pulled a device out of his subspace then. He fiddled with its tiny keypad, glancing between its small screen and the force field. The device beeped quietly at various pitches, probably trying to find and match the force field's frequency and resonance pattern in order to disrupt a portion of it. 

"Can you get through?" Mirage asked of Jazz after a few moments, pushing himself off the ground and unsteadily approaching the saboteur. At about the same moment, the device made a happy series of beeps and an opening formed in the force field. 

Jazz gave Mirage a grin as the window appeared and answered, "Yup." It was a small opening, though. They'd all have to crawl through it, and Skywarp in particular would have to do some interesting contortions to get through, given his wingspan and his larger overall size. Jazz turned to give the Seeker a contemplative look and said, "Hope you practiced your yoga today, big boy."

"Well, as a matter of fact..." Skywarp answered with a smirk. He shoved the two smaller Autobots aside, went gracefully down to his hands and knees, and then folded and contorted himself and his wings in ways that Jazz would have thought completely impossible for someone of his size and configuration. The result was that he was through the small window in the force field in mere seconds. Rising nimbly to his feet on the other side, he folded his arms over his chest and gave Jazz a smug look. "Flexibility comes in handy for all _sorts_ of things, you know," he in a decidedly lascivious tone, still smug 

Jazz gave the Seeker a speculative look and then did an elaborate somersault through the force field window, athletically snapping up to his feet on the other side. "Gymnastic ability's useful, too," he answered Skywarp in the same sort of tone. 

"Oh, _spare me_ ," Mirage long-sufferingly groused as Skywarp chortled despite himself. Mirage plain old crawled through the opening in the force field, muttering about the last shards of his dignity, and then pulled up to his feet on the other side. He fastidiously brushed the gritty dirt from his hands and knees while giving Jazz a disdainful look. "You can flirt with the pretty Seeker later. Door now," he added, imperiously pointing to the aperture in question. He was forgetting, as usual, who was actually in charge, but it wasn't as if Jazz was a stickler for such things.

Jazz just sighed dramatically and answered, "You do know what they say about all work and no play, don't ya, 'Raj?"

"Yes, humans are ridiculous creatures with even more ridiculous notions," Mirage answered primly. "And how many times have I told you not to call me that?"

"8,547," Jazz instantly answered with a wide and unrepentant grin. "Thought you'd've given up by now."

"Then you obviously don't know me very well," Mirage answered with withering haughtiness, looking down his nose at the saboteur.

"Ugh, royals," Skywarp muttered under his breath as he watched the exchange, but Jazz was close enough to him to hear.

"Total party poopers," he solemnly agreed.

"I heard that, you know," Mirage announced calmly. "And while that may very well be true of me, my sister would likely disagree with you."

"Well, that's true enough," Jazz conceded. All of the medics tended to be a bit on the party animal side, after all. It made sense given their stressful job. Plus, all of the Dinobots who weren't Snarl were much the same way, so Swoop was a double party animal.

"So how about we _get her out of here_ ," Mirage was saying, gesturing at the door again. "Or would you two like some time to be alone instead?" he finished sarcastically.

"Actually," Skywarp put in with a snort, " _I'll_ get the door." And then he answered the surprised look that Jazz gave him with a shrug. "Hey, they were dumb enough to give me command codes," he said as he moved toward the door. "Might as well see if they work before you go off doing your voodoo."

Skywarp tapped his command code into the panel by the door, and it slid aside obligingly. Mirage slipped inside first, immediately heading off down the corridor to the right in order to complete his task, fading to invisibility as he went. Skywarp headed in the opposite direction, following the faint flickering of his link to Thundercracker, and Jazz gamely followed him. The fact that the link still existed meant that Thundercracker was still alive, but Skywarp could tell that he was very weak. They needed to find him quickly, for that reason alone, never mind all the other reasons that speed was necessary for this little operation. It was fortunate that the outpost was small, and it would only take them a minute or so to arrive at Thundercracker's location. Skywarp commed as much to Jazz, who nodded in acknowledgement.

A few moments later, Jazz's comm burst to life. "Starscream's party is in position," Prowl's voice said without preamble. "Hound says he can maintain camouflage for another five minutes before his energy levels drop too low."

"Gotcha," Jazz answered. "This place is pretty small. Skywarp and I are closing in on what he says is Thundercracker's position, and Mirage oughta have the force field down any second now. No contacts so far, and we're hoping to keep it that way."

"Copy that," Prowl answered, closing the channel.

Skywarp and Jazz turned a few more corners, and then they were there. It was just a storage room, according to the schematic of the outpost that Starscream had provided, but there was another force field over the door, so it had to be the place. Jazz brought the force field down as easily as he'd opened up a window in the larger one over the entire outpost. Skywarp tried his command codes on the door's key panel, but it made a squelching negative noise, so he raised his arm-mounted weapons instead. Jazz immediately shoved his arms down, irritated.

"You ever heard of _stealth_ , man?" Jazz hissed at him.

"Surprise is more my thing," Skywarp hissed back. 

Jazz snorted at that. "Ain't no one in there to surprise," he said as he pulled another doohickey out of his subspace. He attached the doohickey to the door, it made some chirps and beeps, and a moment later the door slid aside, and Jazz managed to slip inside before Skywarp could. "Unless," he was saying, "you wanna surprise your -- Holy shit!" 

Jazz came to such a sudden halt that Skywarp ran into his back, and the Seeker's greater mass meant that they would have ended up in a heap on the floor were it not for Jazz's quick reflexes that managed to steady the both of them. Skywarp started to say something not kind to the Autobot, but then he noticed what -- _who_ \-- Jazz was staring at and he abruptly shut his mouth. The protest he'd be planning to make morphed into a distressed squeak instead.

Thundercracker was there, all right, directly across the small, windowless, dimly-lit room from the door. His back was to the wall, and he was on his feet, sort of, but only because his arms were cuffed together and raised above his head, attached to a chain hanging down from the ceiling, supporting his weight. His face and body were heavily damaged, wounds of all sizes bleeding freely enough that a large puddle had formed on the floor around him. None of that was particularly shocking, though. No, the shocking thing was the state of Thundercracker's wings. One of them was mostly gone, just a dripping stub remaining. The other piece of it was on the floor a short distance away, probably tossed there carelessly. The edge of the wound was painfully jagged, so the wing had obviously been torn rather than cut off, and Jazz knew how sensitive Seeker wings were. He couldn't begin to imagine what that must have felt like. And the other...

The other was nailed to the wall behind it, a dozen or so thick rods of metal impaling it. They'd been driven through Thundercracker's wing by someone possessing great strength, and the only candidate that filled the bill was Megatron.

"Oh," Jazz managed to utter. He'd seen a lot of cruel things done to a lot of people in his time. Hell, more often than he wanted to admit, he'd been the one doing the cruel things. But this? It might have started out as torture, but what it amounted to was a slow and excruciating execution. 

Skywarp unfroze then, edging around Jazz in order to approach his trinemate.

"TC?" he said tentatively, hoping that his trinemate was unconscious, even though the trinelink was insisting that he wasn't.

Hearing a voice, Thundercracker tried but failed to lift his head, but he did manage to say, weak and pleading, "Go 'way. Already told you...ever'thing I know." His voice was weak and cracking with static as he finished, "Just let me die in peace."

"No, TC," Skywarp answered, sounding dazed and uncertain. Then he shook his head decisively and closed the distance between he and his trinemate. He lifted Thundercracker's head with one gentle hand under his chin. "No, you're not gonna die, Teece. I'm gonna get you out of here."

Thundercracker did succeed in lifting his head then. He blearily blinked his one functional eye and muttered uncomprehendingly, "'Warp?"

"Yeah, buddy," Skywarp answered, smiling at him. "The cavalry's here."

"No," Thundercracker protested, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Megatron said....He said that you...said... No, I mus' be...mus' be 'magining..."

"Nope," Skywarp answered reassuringly. "I'm here, TC. Swear to Primus. Whatever Megatron said, he was fucking with you or else just fucking _wrong_." He paused for a moment and then asked in a very dangerous tone, "He did this to you?" 

Thundercracker nodded weakly. "Wouldn't stop," he said, voice slurring. "Told him what he wanted to know. 'Bout Eclipse. 'Bout Swoop. Even 'bout Starscream. Still wouldn't stop... Jus' kept..." He turned his head to look at his own impaled wing, flinched, and then whimpered pathetically. "Hurts a bit."

" _A bit_?" Jazz echoed incredulously.

"Yeah, I know, buddy," Skywarp replied soothingly, ignoring the Autobot and trying to keep the fury he was feeling out of his voice. In his state, Thundercracker would undoubtedly think that he was angry at him and not at Megatron because Thundercracker was just like that. "Just hang on a little bit longer, OK?"

"'K," Thundercracker answered weakly. "M'trying."

"I know," Skywarp said fondly. "For once, it's a good thing that you're a stubborn fucker." Thundercracker managed a weak snort, as Skywarp turned to look at his Autobot companion. "I don't suppose you have a doohickey that'll unlock those cuffs on you?"

"'Fraid not," Jazz answered apologetically, but then he grinned and unspaced his blaster, twirling it dramatically for good measure. "I got this, though."

Skywarp frowned at him and protested, "You wouldn't let me use my guns!"

Jazz smirked as he answered, "Yeah, well, we ain't got a lot of other options here, do we?" Skywarp made a grudgingly agreeing noise and Jazz continued, "I'm just gonna shoot the chain, but when it breaks, that's gonna put all his weight on..." He waved a hand at Thundercracker's maimed wing.

"Yeah, I know," Skywarp acknowledged. "I'll try to hold him up." He leaned against his trinemate then, supporting his weight enough to create a little bit of slack in the chain holding Thundercracker's arms over his head. Thundercracker cried out at the contact, partly because Skywarp was leaning against open wounds but more so because the shift in his weight jostled his impaled wing.

"Sorry, Teece," Skywarp murmured at him. And he wasn't only apologizing for Thundercracker's discomfort. "I'm so, so sorry."

"S'OK," Thundercracker said faintly, woozily. "S'all good. S'all jus'...dandy."

Skywarp huffed affectionately while Jazz asked, "Ready?" At Skywarp's nod he added, "On three, then."

Jazz counted to three, fired, and the chain was severed. Thundercracker sagged despite Skywarp's best efforts to support his weight. He screamed in a way that Skywarp would never forget before the sound abruptly cut off when Thundercracker's vocalizer shorted out, which probably wasn't the first time it had recently done that. And then, mercifully, Thundercracker blacked out a few moments later.

"Oh, thank Primus," Skywarp said fervently, even though he was now struggling to manage the tons of dead weight and floppy limbs that was his trinemate. He shifted him a little less than gently, now that he was unconscious anyway.

"If we take those out," Skywarp said once he'd arranged Thundercracker a bit more manageably against himself, eyeing the rods impaling Thundercracker's wing, "it's going to take forever. It'd be better to just take his wing off."

"Well, yeah," Jazz answered in a "duh" sort of tone, "except that we can't do that because they connect in the back. There ain't enough give to get behind him to disconnect it, and I don't know 'bout you, but I don't have the strength to just...y'know...rip it off."

"Neither do I," Skywarp said quietly, wincing and feeling sick. And angry at the person who did have the strength to rip off a Seeker's wing. Furious, even.

"Can't you just teleport him outta here, once the force field's down?" Jazz was asking.

Skywarp grimaced as he answered, "It's not the best idea in his condition, and those things are going to come with him." He waved a distressed hand at Thundercracker's wing. "But I guess it's the only option we have, so...Um, yes?"

Jazz nodded, even patted the shoulder that didn't have a Seeker sprawled over and against it. "First Aid'll take good care of him, I promise," he said sincerely. "We'll take both of you back to Autobot Headquarters when we're done here."

Skywarp grimaced anew at that notion, but it wasn't as if he had any alternative available, having gone as far as he already had. A cryptic human expression about pennies and pounds occurred to him at about the same time that an almost elegant little explosion rocked the outpost, as if it was an embodiment of the anger that was eating at Skywarp.

"That'll be Mirage," Jazz said with a smirk. "Right on time and with his usual flair."

"Yeah, the force field's down," Skywarp confirmed with a nod, since his teleportation field generator showed green on his HUD now.

"Then get Thundercracker outta here," Jazz ordered. He shared an intense look with the Seeker and added, "And then come on back to the party, if ya want."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Skywarp answered with equal intensity before he and his injured trinemate vanished in a swirl of purple haze and light.


	20. Karma, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the Chapter Of Death, whee. :)

The force field came down with a fizzle of residual electrostatic energy and a hint of ozone, just the cue that the small raiding party had been waiting for.

"I'll get the door," Snarl announced before anyone else could do or say anything. He charged forward in his stegosaur form and with more agility than one would have expected of someone of his bulk, he whipped his body around to give the outpost's thin exterior wall a solid whack with his spiked tail. He'd gotten a good power boost from the sunny but frigid day, and a long section of the installation's aging wall tumbled halfway down under his assault. With a fierce, howling war cry, Snarl smashed his way through the remaining rubble, clearing a large enough pathway for his two smaller companions as well.

"It's nice to be on the same side as the Dinobots, for once," Starscream observed to no one in particular as he followed in Snarl's destructive wake. "So much for subtle, though," he added to Sideswipe, who had settled beside him.

Sideswipe snorted and said, "Subtlety really isn't their thing."

"You don't say," Starscream answered dryly. He stopped in his tracks then, took a moment to orient himself and check Swoop's location, and then, turning on his heel, he ran off in the opposite direction. "This way," he called over his shoulder. He didn't have to stop to see if the others followed him; he could hear them behind him. Especially Snarl. For his size, he could move fast when he wanted to, but he'd never be anything like quiet, much less stealthy. Not that it mattered. The Dinobot was there to be brute strength, not finesse.

It was a small outpost, so it was a matter of a few minutes before the party found itself outside of an actual door this time.

"She's in there," Starscream needlessly said, jerking his head at the door. He gave Snarl a look and said, "You want to get the door again?"

Snarl gave a wordless but cheery snort, gathered himself, and then launched himself head-first at the door.

* * * * * *

The tell-tale vibrations of a nearby explosion brought Swoop marginally to her senses. She found herself sprawled face-down on a frigid purple-grey metal floor, shivering from the cold and trembling from searing pain that was lancing through her entire body but that in particular radiated from her spark and a very specific part of her body that she was determinedly not thinking about. She pushed herself up first to her hands and knees, her arms shaking in protest as they struggled to bear the weight of her torso, and then pushed herself farther back, onto her heels...at which point she realized that Soundwave's cassette minions were guarding her. They'd formed a wary circle around her, weapons trained on her. Under normal circumstances, she'd pose far more of a threat to them than they would to her, but she was weakened on many fronts and in no condition or mood for a fight. So she sat there, looking around herself and trying to gather her wits while attempting to appear non-threatening.

Megatron currently had his back to her. He was leaning on one of the consoles in the room, probably looking for the cause of the explosion that had roused Swoop to consciousness. He yelled some things, obviously over the comm, but his words weren't really registering with Swoop. Nothing much was. Her senses were dulled, as if there was something wrong with all of her sensory inputs except those that registered pain. She shook her head sharply, as if that might clear her head, but the movement only made the world lurch around her in fitful spinning that made nausea rise in the back of her throat. She closed her eyes, trying to push it aside...Only to open her eyes again in surprise when a door on the other side of the room seemed to explode as Snarl in his dinosaur form crashed through it. Just behind him, hard on her enraged brother's heels, were Sideswipe and Starscream. All three of them immediately went after Megatron, easily fending off the cassettes who abandoned guarding Swoop in favor of trying to back up their leader. 

A few moments later, but from another direction, Jazz and Mirage also arrived on the scene, both of them already sporting battle damage, Mirage more so than Jazz; he was moving with an obvious limp. Swoop tried to focus on cataloging his damage, something that she usually did without even thinking about it, but it felt as if something was wrong with her processors, too. They weren't doing what she wanted them to do. She was losing the ability to think, and it was distressing.

Jazz yelled something at Starscream then, making Swoop jump, something about having dealt with everyone else inside the outpost but that their backup was encountering some resistance outside. In response to the saboteur's voice, the cassettes left Megatron to fend for himself and turned their collective attention on the new arrivals instead, and at just about the same instant, Skywarp suddenly appeared in the middle of the room in a flash of purple that was sickeningly familiar to Swoop. She assumed that he was there to attack her rescuers...right up until the moment that, with an enraged yell, he leaped onto Megatron instead, which Megatron clearly hadn't expected any more than Swoop had. The distraction allowed Sideswipe to get a few glancing hits on Megatron with his pile drivers, but Megatron eventually fought off both of them easily enough. It was clear that Skywarp's rage was inhibiting his ability to strategize, and his enraged flailing hampered Sideswipe's efforts in turn. 

Part of her mind was telling Swoop to move, to help, to do _something_ , but she found that she could only stare at all of it, watching attacks and counter-attacks, watching as some of the greatly overmatched cassettes went down while the others fled. She was frozen, and in her dazed state she couldn't begin to comprehend how her would-be rescuers were there. And then she numbly watched them fall, one by one, except for Starscream. It was very obvious that Megatron was saving Starscream for last. 

Snarl was the next-to-last to go down, though not before he'd done considerable damage to Megatron with his sword. But then Megatron ripped a console out of the floor and smacked Snarl in the head with it while simultaneously firing his fusion cannon and scoring a direct hit to Snarl's chest. The combination was enough to bring her brother down, and Swoop stared numbly at his fallen bulk. He was sprawled, deeply unconscious at least, not far from her, and it vaguely occurred to her that she should see to him, that she ought to be attending to all those who had fallen, but she couldn't move. She couldn't think. And she couldn't take her eyes off of Megatron and Starscream, now squared off against each other and circling like wary vultures. 

"Well, I figured you'd come crawling out of whatever hole you've been hiding in, Starscream," Megatron spat at Starscream. "Though I see you've managed to make some friends while you've been away."

"Not really," Starscream answered with an arrogant toss of his head, his wings sweeping back. "We just have common goals for the moment."

"Ah, yes. Rescuing your pathetic little queen," Megatron replied. "Who seems to have made the rest of your trine insane, too," he added, jerking his chin at Skywarp, who was trying but utterly failing to push himself up off the floor.

"Hah!" Starscream countered, "I'm fairly certain that it was you who did that. Your plan for Eclipse pissed off Thundercracker, and I imagine hurting Thundercracker was the last straw in a pile of them for Skywarp. So, all your fault. As usual. Too bad you don't have Prowl around to think for you anymore."

Megatron snarled at that, baring his teeth, but he didn't attack. Not yet. "I do have to say that I can understand now why you didn't want to part with our new queen," he taunted Starscream instead, disdain dripping from the title. "She puts up quite a delightful fight, and she screams so very prettily. I think I'll hold on to her after all. She makes a lovely plaything."

That broke Starscream, and he charged. Swoop could only watch as the two of them executed a dance that she might have thought absorbingly graceful if she hadn't known that it was also deadly. Unfortunately for Starscream, he was a Seeker, built for speed and precision in flight, for air-to-air combat and strafing runs, not for hand-to-hand combat, certainly not against someone who was larger, stronger, and built for exactly that. Outmatched, he was soon losing his battle. He was apparently aware of this, and since the companions he'd brought with him who were hand-to-hand fighters had gone down, his plan now seemed to be to act as a distraction so that Swoop could escape, perhaps sacrificing himself in the process.

Starscream had already yelled at Swoop twice to run, but she couldn't move, much less run. She felt wholly disconnected from her body now, stupid and frozen. Maybe it was an effect of altered core programming, or maybe it was a traumatized reaction to what Megatron had done to her, or maybe it was a combination of both. As Swoop's mind sluggishly lumbered off to contemplate that question, Megatron, moving so quickly that he was almost a blur, landed a blow that sent Starscream flying across the room, where he smashed into the wall with enough force to dent the wall. He crashed to the floor and then lay there, insensate, for long, critical moments. He was already bleeding copiously from half a dozen grievous injuries that the medic in Swoop had noted as she'd watched him moving, and she knew that, even though he was nigh-impossible to kill, he wasn't completely invulnerable. If anyone could kill him, it would be Megatron and his fusion cannon, and he would drag out Starscream's destruction as long as he could, make him suffer humiliation for as long as possible before he finally delivered the killing blow. And right now, there was no one who could prevent that.

No one except Swoop.

Starscream's death would mean that she would be free of him, but Swoop didn't welcome the idea. The notion just made her angry, and the anger grew as she watched Megatron enjoy himself by toying with Starscream. He stomped his way over to Starscream while Starscream was still trying to push himself off the floor. Megatron grabbed him, lifted him, and pinned him against the wall he'd just crashed into, both of his hands wrapped with crushing force around Starscream's throat while Starscream kicked ineffectually at him. 

Something broke in Swoop then. Or maybe it wasn't a breaking so much as a reconnecting. Reconnecting with a disused and long-suppressed part of herself. Fury fed that part of her like the purest energon. Focus and the instincts of the predator that she was rose to the surface, smashing through the numb fog that was all that was left of her rational self. She drilled down onto a single purpose, the rage pushing aside everything else and affording her strength. In the last few moments of rationality that she knew, it occurred to Swoop that the animal within her was the only part of her core programming that didn't seem affected by whatever Soundwave had done to her. He hadn't bothered with the calculating and violent predator that lurked at her core, as if it didn't matter. As if it was a negligible threat. As if it was unworthy of consideration as a threat. As if he didn't know what to do with it. 

Swoop knew exactly what to do with it. She would do what she had been built to do. She would cause pain and terror. She would bathe in Megatron's blood. She would protect her wounded mate at all costs. Most of all, she would have vengeance. Vicious, drawn-out vengeance. She would humiliate Megatron as he had humiliated her. And then...

Then she would _kill_ him. Megatron was going to pay a spectacularly high price for Soundwave's arrogant disregard for the primitive.

Snarling, sharp teeth bared in anticipation, her gaze never leaving Megatron and Starscream, Swoop slithered back to her hands and knees and then scooted over to Snarl's still form, hiding herself behind him as she wrapped a hand around the hilt of his sword, growling as she wrestled it from his still somehow firm grasp. Weapon secured, she moved to the damaged, sparking console that Megatron had shoved her against when he had violated her, which happened to be the closest one to the two warriors. Megatron didn't seem to notice her moving about, wholly focused on Starscream as he was, so she paused there to assess her prey, pinpointing existing damage to exploit. A plan of attack occurred to her without conscious thought, and she hefted Snarl's sword with a grunt of effort. It was heavy, not much shorter than she was tall, and it crackled with pent-up energy along the entire length of its viciously-serrated blade. 

Growling, Swoop moved out from behind the console, approaching Megatron as closely as she dared, and then she launched herself at him, leaping halfway across the room and onto his back with an enraged and wordless screech while he was still focused on the task of slowly depriving Starscream's processors of energon. She clung tightly to him with both of her legs and with one arm wrapped securely around his throat, anchoring herself, and before Megatron could react and dislodge her, she rammed the point of Snarl's sword into his side. The blow took advantage of damage that Snarl had already inflicted upon him with the same sword, and the blade, powered by feral Dinobot strength, bit through the width of Megatron's torso, its point emerging on the other side, underneath his arm. And then, just as brutally, Swoop pulled the blade out, twisting it savagely so that its wicked serrations would inflict maximum damage as she pulled it free of her prey's body.

It wasn't a fatal blow. Swoop hadn't intended it to be because she had no intention of killing Megatron quickly. It was a painful and debilitating blow, though, particularly so on top of the injuries that had already been inflicted upon Megatron. She gloated at the pain that he had to have been experiencing, hooting triumphantly. It was enough that Megatron was forced to abandon his assault on Starscream, who immediately slipped to the floor, clutching reflexively at his throat and staring at Swoop in wide-eyed shock, as if he didn't recognize the crazed creature that was clinging to his opponent's back. Dimly, she heard Starscream make a choked sound of protest at what she was doing, but she ignored him, her attention lethally focused on Megatron. Starscream continued to speak, maybe into a comm this time, but Swoop continued to ignore him.

She was too busy clinging to Megatron's back as he staggered and crashed to his knees. Grunting in pain and swearing for all he was worth, he reached around himself to claw at Swoop, attempting but failing to dislodge her from her precarious perch. He was hampered by the injury that she had dealt him, and she was small enough, and his angle of approach was awkward enough that she could evade his attempts to grab her, shimmying away and jerking out of his grasp even when he managed to land a hand on her. The one time that he did manage to get a better hold on her, enough that he was almost able to pull her off of him, he found himself nailed dead center in the chest with a null ray, courtesy of Starscream, who was down and weakened but not out, not yet. And while Megatron was distracted by Starscream's actions as well as feeling the numbing effects of the null ray, Swoop was able to re-anchor herself and raise the sword again, this time to bludgeon the side of Megatron's head with its large, heavy pommel, creating a sizable dent.

Megatron went down then, with a ponderous crash, taking two consoles with him. He was stunned, but he still managed to twist as he went down so that he landed on his back. He'd obviously been hoping to pin Swoop under his much larger and heavier body, but she leaped away from him as he collapsed and then whirled around to face him again as soon as her feet hit the floor, still unerringly wielding the sword. Not giving Megatron any time to recover from the null ray blasts or the blow to his head and the processors within, Swoop grasped the sword's hilt in both hands, and with a terrifying, audio-rending screech, brought the heavy blade slashing down halfway between his shoulder and his right elbow joint. The result was a messily-severed right forearm, on which his fusion canon was mounted.

Showers of sparks flew in all directions, and short-circuited discharge crackled over what was left of Megatron's arm and then up over his chest. He roared in pain and outrage and involuntarily waved the stump of his arm around, spattering Swoop with warm energon and other vital fluids, adding to the smears of fluids that were already decorating her, some of it her own. Swoop unleashed a vicious screech and licked at some of it that had landed on her face, consumed with blood lust.

Megatron, meanwhile, was using his legs and his remaining arm to scuttle backwards, away from Swoop, his movements becoming slowly feebler, but he was still bellowing at the top of his voice. Whether he did so in pain or simply because of the sheer insult of what she'd done to him, she didn't know. Or much care, really. While he was distracted by pain or enraged indignation or both, she leaped toward him and landed hard on him, feet first. In his weakened state, the force of her landing on him was enough to flatten Megatron to the floor. With one foot planted on his abdomen for stability, Swoop poised the tip of the sword's blade meaningfully against Megatron's chest and pushed down on it with enough force that the point lodged into the thick armor plating directly over his spark chamber, deeply enough that any movement on his part might drive it home. Megatron stilled instantly, staring up at Swoop in wordless disbelief as she grasped the hilt of the sword with both hands, marshaling her strength. Energy licked out from the blade hungrily, as if longing for its eventual destination.

"You were _wrong_ , Megatron," Swoop spat at him in a deep, thick voice that sounded nothing like her own. She flexed her fingers, slightly shifting her double-handed grip around the sword hilt, getting a firmer grip on it. "What you said. Don't belong to you. _You_ belong to _me_. I will do with you as _I_ choose. And I choose," Swoop growled viciously at him, "to _end_ you. What goes around, comes around. " 

And then, putting all of her rage into it, Swoop rammed the blade home, her head thrown back and her body arched as she unleashed a reverberating, victorious howl. The blade ripped through the remaining thickness of Megatron's armor, slammed cleanly through his spark chamber, tore through his back, and then bit deeply into the floor beneath him. He was ignominiously pinned like an insect in a collection, and for a long moment, he was silent, surprise shunting aside pain and forestalling death for a few seconds.

During those few seconds of thick, foreboding silence, Swoop leaned down to snarl menacingly, right in his face, "Scream for me, Megatron." It was an echo of something he'd said to her while he'd been defiling her, and it seemed only fitting to repay humiliation with humiliation.

On cue, Megatron screamed. And screamed. And screamed some more. He continued to scream even as his body convulsed violently and helplessly on its macabre skewer, as the sword's energy devoured his spark. It was a horrible death. A slow and excruciating death. It was exactly the death that he deserved, and Swoop felt nothing but satisfaction. But then someone was moving toward her mate, and that just wouldn't do...

* * * * * *

Prowl and Ratchet stumbled into the outpost's control room just before Swoop used Snarl's sword to sever Megatron's arm. Even though Starscream had warned them that Swoop had, in the Seeker's own words, gone berserk, they still weren't quite prepared for the scene that greeted them. Both Autobots came to an abrupt standstill, gaping at the obviously feral Dinobot who was equally obviously enjoying what she was doing to Megatron. Many of the room's occupants -- those who had come around, at least -- were in the same condition, frozen and watching as the usually mild-mannered Dinobot dispatched Megatron in a stunning display of deliberately brutal violence.

"Dear Primus," Prowl murmured when it was over, stunned awe in his voice. Ratchet was just about to agree, but at that moment, Megatron finally stopped convulsing and Prowl suddenly staggered, crashing down on top of Skywarp, who happened to be kneeling next to the two just-arrived Autobots. Skywarp half broke Prowl's fall and half caught him awkwardly and then lowered him to the floor.

Ratchet, surprised, crouched down next to the two of them, but Skywarp just shook his head and said, "I've got him. Starscream needs you, though," he added jerking his chin toward the other side of the room, where his trinemate was lying in a widening pool of vital fluids. "It's bad," Skywarp unnecessarily informed him, and Ratchet just then noticed the pained look on his face and realized that the Seeker was linked to two badly injured trinemates. The strain was showing. Bizarre empathy pawed at Ratchet, but at the moment he had larger concerns. Cursing under his breath, Ratchet pushed himself to his feet and made his way across the room, picking his way past rubble and the remains of wrecked consoles and equipment as well as semi-insensate comrades and enemies alike. He gave Megatron's body a wide berth since fitful but powerful flares of residual energy were still arcing off of him.

Ratchet was only a few meters from his target when a sudden obstacle appeared in his path, in the form of one very angry Dinobot. Swoop planted herself protectively between Ratchet and Starscream, long golden wings flared out. One of them hung at a painful-looking angle, but the other was fully extended, twitching with nervous energy along its entire length. She was poised to attack, her body gathered to leap on him, her fingers curled into claws. Her narrowed eyes glowed almost white with fury. Her teeth were bared, nose wrinkled in a grimacing threat display, and she was growling, low and rumbling waves of sound radiating from her, almost visible in their intensity. She obviously didn't recognize who and what Ratchet was. She took one step toward him before pausing, perhaps to determine whether or not he would back off if threatened.

Part of Ratchet thought that backing off was a great idea, but the rest of him knew that wasn't an option. He fought to hold his ground, the fear that was licking at him making him want nothing more than to turn and run in the opposite direction. The Dinobots had been designed to be terrifying and while Swoop's new body was less so, designed to be aesthetically-pleasing and eye-catching instead, she was still powerful, and every tense, twitching inch of her spoke of nothing but a promise to tear him apart should he take a single step closer to Starscream. 

Ratchet decided to try talking her down. Talking didn't work with her brothers when they went feral, but a feral Swoop -- Something that no one had seen before -- had a different quality about her. Her aura was calculating, and it was obvious that she was far more aware than her brothers were when they gave in to their inner animal. Ratchet hoped that meant that she would listen to reason.

"Swoop," Ratchet said to her, keeping his voice soothing. He held his arms out and away from himself, keeping his hands visible, and crouching down a little into a more submissive posture. "I need to help Starscream, all right? I'm not going to hurt him, I promise." He took an experimental half-step forward.

Swoop hissed at him and, lightning-fast, her undamaged wing whipped toward him with a powerful _whoof_ of displaced air. It didn't make contact, but only because Ratchet leaped backward reflexively. Swoop advanced menacingly toward him as he moved back, precisely stalking his retreat. Out of the corner of his eye, Ratchet noticed Sideswipe and Jazz inching toward Swoop from one side, gearing up to intervene, but he waved them back. He didn't want Swoop hurt. He didn't want anyone else hurt, either, and it was obvious that Swoop was looking to hurt someone. She was disarmed, but that hardly mattered. She could rip someone apart with her bare hands if she had to, especially in the state that she was in. Provoking her would only make things worse, and it was best to keep everyone else away from her. He spoke to Swoop again.

"C'mon, Winglet," he crooned softly to her. "Don't do this. Calm down and listen to me, OK? Listen to my voice. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt Starscream. I'm going to help him. He needs help. You know that. I _know_ you know that." Swoop seemed to consider his words for a moment, her head tilting inquisitively to the side and her posture relaxing a little. Encouraged, Ratchet took two steps forward. 

Which was the wrong thing to do. Swoop screeched and gathered herself to leap at him, and the only thing that stopped her from doing so was a null ray impacting her back. It seemed to have little-to-no effect on her, other than knocking her slightly forward, off-balance for half a moment. But she quickly regained her footing and half-turned to give Starscream a betrayed look, her attention divided between him and Ratchet.

"It's OK, Swoop," Ratchet said to her, trying to take advantage of her distraction, fighting to keep his voice calm and even. "It's OK. We're just trying to get you to calm down. Just stand down, let me help Starscream, and everything will be fine, I promise."

He took another step toward Swoop, hoping that she was distracted enough not to notice, and in the next split-second she leaped on him with a roar terrifyingly similar to those she'd unleashed as she'd been dispatching Megatron. Ratchet went down under her, fighting to push her off himself and although he was larger than her, she was stronger and powered by instinctive rage while he was hampered by the fact that he had to avoid hurting her. Swoop used her entire body to hold him down, screeching and howling as her teeth went for his throat, managing to tear a few cables and conduits before hands landed on her, trying to pull her away. She screamed and thrashed wildly to dislodge the attackers, using her undamaged wing as a weapon. Ratchet saw Jazz go flying, crashing into a wall, but he had to focus all of his attention on preventing Swoop from literally biting his head off. And then he heard the discharge of Starscream's null ray again. And again. And _again_. Each time, he felt some of the weapon's effect, too, since he and Swoop were in physical contact. The paralyzing energy partially numbed him as well, hampering his efforts to fend off Swoop, but the last blast from Starscream's weapon finally brought Swoop down, and she collapsed on top of Ratchet.

Carefully, Ratchet pushed Swoop's inert body off of him, sitting up and gently arranging her on the floor. He saw that Starscream had managed to get to his feet and move closer to increase the effectiveness of his weapon on Swoop, and he angled his gaze up to meet Starscream's. He nodded a thank you at him, which Starscream wearily returned. But moving and then firing his weapon multiple times had apparently consumed the few energy reserves he had left. He staggered and then collapsed onto the one remaining intact console in the room. The console crumpled under Starscream's weight, and it and he crashed to the floor in a lurid shower of sparks.

"Damn it," Ratchet cursed, pushing himself to his feet, watching out of the corner of his eye as Sideswipe and Prowl warily approached Swoop. Prowl had restraints already at hand. Confident that the two warriors would take care of Swoop without further damaging her, Ratchet focused his attention on Starscream. His savior, at least for today. The thought rankled, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

Megatron had dealt the Seeker some severe damage, the worst of which was a deep gash across his midsection, so deep that with not too much more force, Megatron would have succeeded in ripping him in half. It was clear that one of the main conduits was severed; the wound was spurting vital fluids like a fountain, enough that Ratchet was surprised that he hadn't already bled out, much less that he'd had enough energy to move around and fire his weapon multiple times. _Damn stubborn-aft warriors_ , he thought, heaving a growling sigh as he probed the wound far less gently than he would have had Starscream been conscious. Finding the severed conduit, he pinched it off with one hand. He'd need two hands to temporarily patch it properly, but for the moment he could clamp off some of the other injuries, a few of which weren't much less serious than the abdominal injury. He was busily clamping away when his comm activated.

"Ratchet," First Aid's voice said, his tone the usual mix of tension, urgency, and the supernatural calm that was characteristic of a medic in the middle of a crisis, "I need more hands. Thundercracker's fading and there's just...there's _too much_."

"Frag it," Ratchet growled to himself before answering over the comm. "I'll be there as soon as I can, 'Aid," But there was no way he could be in two places at once. Unless... Ratchet fixed his gaze on Skywarp across the room and called out to him, "You! Get over here!"

Skywarp blinked and then glanced around himself, certain that the Autobot medic couldn't be talking to him. When he saw that no one else was nearby, he gave Ratchet a puzzled look.

"Come _here_!" Ratchet yelled at him, more belligerently this time, and in response, Skywarp found himself moving without thinking about it, picking his way across the room until he was able to kneel down next to Ratchet and his unconscious trine leader. The medic unceremoniously grabbed one of his hands and then plunged it into Starscream's torn-open midsection. Skywarp squawked a protest that clearly communicated his revulsion, but Ratchet just hissed at him, "Don't be a baby. See that conduit I'm pinching off there? Good. Now you pinch it off. Hard. And whatever you do, do _not_ let go."

Skywarp gulped at that, taking over pinching off the large severed energon conduit in question as Ratchet busied himself with Starscream's other injuries. Now that he had two hands, he could quickly finish applying myriad clamps and temporary patches to hold Starscream over until Ratchet could get him back to his medbay. As he worked he explained to Skywarp, "First Aid needs my help with Thundercracker. I need to get there quickly or else he's going to die. But I can't leave Starscream here like this, either. And," he added, grunting as he hurriedly yanked off an armor panel in the side of Starscream's chest and fiddled around with something in the underlying structure that he'd exposed, "we all need to get out of here and get back to the Ark as quickly as possible if you want two living trinemates at the end of all of this. So, how many people can you teleport in one go?" 

Skywarp had been staring blankly down at his hand buried in Starscream's innards, trying to think about anything other than what his hand was doing, but he jerked his head up to blink at Ratchet in reaction to the medic's question. "Um, it really depends on total mass and distance traveled more than number of individuals," he answered unthinkingly.

Which made sense, of course, given that size varied widely in their species and that a longer trip would require more energy. Ratchet nodded curtly and then asked, "Could you handle all of us in one trip?"

Skywarp sputtered a shaky, disbelieving laugh. "Only if you're looking to kill me and everyone else while you're at it," he answered snarkily.

Ratchet snorted at that. "OK, too much. How 'bout you, me, and Starscream in one trip? And then however many return trips for everyone else?"

Skywarp gave the medic an incredulous look, but then he sighed and answered, "If you brought decent fuel with you that I can have before each of the extra trips, yes. If not, then this first one is all you're gonna get outta me. Either way, I'm gonna be crashing when I'm done."

Ratchet nodded. "We have fuel. We knew this little party was going to drain Hound, at least, and from what Starscream had said, we figured that Thundercracker was going to be in bad shape. There ought to be enough to keep you going, too. And then you can sleep all you want." 

Skywarp nodded sharply and said, "All right, then. Now?"

"In a second," Ratchet answered, biting his lower lip as he rooted around in the side of Starscream's chest. Then, finished, he glanced at Skywarp, laid a hand covered in Starscream's fluids on Skywarp's forearm, and said, simply, "Go."

The world vanished in a flash of purple.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update, yay? 
> 
> It isn't as long as I intended it to be, though. I have more written, but I keep dithering about what to put in this story and what should be saved for the next one, and one of the problematic bits in that regard is the one that's, currently, right after this one. But then I realized that this bit isn't going to change regardless of what I do with the rest of the story, so I figured I might as well pop this up here. I'm also now unsure how many more chapters this is going to have. I'm thinking three, but since it's a bit up in the air, I've removed the total chapter count for now.

Optimus Prime strode through the doors to the medbay, finding it in its usual post-skirmish state of loud but controlled chaos. Medics called out to each other and, along with their helpers, scurried between berths that held injured comrades and, this time, not-exactly-comrades. The chaos was somewhat less controlled than usual, since one of the medics was a patient and the skirmish had resulted in a number of serious injuries. A harried-sounding Ratchet had called in all hands, even human ones, when he'd been halfway back to Headquarters, and a harried Ratchet was never a good sign.

As Optimus came in, Ratchet was just stepping back from a hardly recognizable Thundercracker, horrifically damaged as he obviously was. Optimus had gotten a report from Prowl already -- of course -- and in it he'd mentioned that the Seeker wasn't in good shape. It was obvious to Optimus now that that was yet another example of Prowl's remarkable gift for understatement. Thundercracker's wings were gone, large portions of his armor were missing, and there were gaping wounds all over him. To top it all off, his distinctive Earth-sky-blue color was half faded on what remained of his armor. Both Ratchet and Hoist had been working on him, but when Ratchet noticed Optimus's presence, he came over to him, wiping off the worst of the fluids spattered on him with a cloth that he produced from subspace.

"If you need to..." Optimus said, waving a demonstrative hand at the Seeker, "I can wait."

"No, no, he's stable for the moment, " Ratchet answered, frowning over his own shoulder at the Seeker. "He needs a _lot_ of surgery to fix what's ailing him," he elaborated, "but so far he's been too unstable to survive it. If he stays stable enough now, we'll be going in, but we need to monitor him for a while first, so..."

"So," Optimus said with a comprehending nod, "I came for a report, I suppose."

Ratchet eyed Optimus dubiously, and this his eyes narrowed suspiciously as he asked, "In person? You're stalling, aren't you?" It was, Optimus had to allow, a legitimate question, and Ratchet was, as usual, accurately insightful when Optimus didn't want him to be. Usually, Optimus comm'ed him for such reports, usually when he was on the way to a debrief or a meeting, so for him to instead take time to divert to the medbay for an in-person report was odd. The medic's suspicions were confirmed when Optimus just shrugged wordlessly, so he smirked but gamely reported, "Well, Thundercracker's by far the worst off, though none of it is the result of any fighting."

"He does look terrible," Optimus agreed with a frown in his voice.

"And he's worse than he looks," Ratchet growled with a furious scowl. "All of it was intended to cause as much pain as possible."

Optimus winced. "Megatron must've wanted to get the truth out of him _very_ badly," he surmised.

"And once he got that truth, he wanted to make him suffer for a while and then die," Ratchet agreed with curt nod and a growl. "And I know it's a lot more complicated than this, but if it weren't for Thundercracker, Swoop wouldn't be here, at the very least not as a free individual."

Optimus gave him a questioning look at that.

"Prowl told me on the ride over here," Ratchet said, answering Prime's unspoken question in a remarkably level voice, "that Megatron's plan had been to keep Eclipse alive and condition her so that when she matured, she'd be nothing but a brainwashed captive breeding machine. "

Optimus winced, suppressing a shudder as he answered, "I'd gathered as much from what Prowl had insinuated, but I'd hoped what I'd imagined was wrong."

"It wasn't," Ratchet said, scowling, his tone no longer quite so level. "In fact, his plan was probably worse than you were imagining. And _that_ was what Thundercracker objected to. It was why he did what he did during the Uprising, which in turn is what ultimately gave me -- _us_ \-- Swoop. So I, at least, owe Thundercracker more than I can possibly repay. I don't know if he's going to make it, but I'll do my best for him."

Optimus nodded solemnly, knowing that to be nothing less than the truth. Even without bizarre, extenuating circumstances, Ratchet's policy had always been that whoever landed in his medbay got the very best of care, whether they were friend or foe. Optimus wasn't sure which category to put Thundercracker in anymore, but a long chat with Prowl and his other top advisors was next on his agenda to figure out that, among many other things that needed explaining and figuring out in the wake of all that had happened over the past several months. He really wasn't looking forward to that meeting. Coming to the medbay was, just as Ratchet had surmised, stalling, but at least it was stalling that he could justify. 

Sort of.

"After Thundercracker," Ratchet was continuing, waving at another berth, "Starscream was the next worst off, but I had managed to get some work done on him on site before I got called to help First Aid with Thundercracker. The crazy idiot has more clamps inside of him than anything else right now and he's in stasis, but he's all right for the moment and will probably be mostly fine in a few days, once we can finish welding his insides back together and then get some energon back in him."

Optimus nodded and said, with an edge to his voice, "I'm sure Swoop will be relieved." Ratchet just heaved a long sigh at that, so Optimus asked, quietly, "Is it true that she...?"

"That she killed Megatron more or less single-handedly in a feral rage?" Ratchet wearily finished his question. "Yes. That she was going to kill _me_ afterwards, when I got too close to Starscream for her likings? Yes. And that I currently owe my life to _Starscream_ , of all people, because he took her down with four null ray blasts that ate more energy than he had to spare? Yes."

Optimus merely blinked at all of that, momentarily at a loss for words. Eventually, he shook his head as if to clear it out and said, "Surely she wouldn't have--"

"Killed me?" Ratchet interrupted. He barked a humorless laugh, absently rubbing at the front of his throat as he answered himself, "Oh yes, she would have. I've seen Grimlock and Slag lose it, and sure, they're lethal and can't tell friend from foe, but they're fairly easy to bring down because they're just kind of _not there_ , you know?"

Optimus nodded because he, in fact, knew _all too well_.

"They just react when they're in that state," Ratchet was continuing. "No planning or strategy or anything. But Swoop?" He paused for a moment and shook his head before continuing, "I only saw the last few minutes of the...the thing with Megatron, but she was planning every move she made, and she was _enjoying_ herself. It was _terrifying_. And then when she went after me?" He shuddered demonstratively. "Sometimes I wish we could just get rid of that part of the Dinobots' programming, but it's the core of their core. If it was removed, they wouldn't be who they are anymore."

"And we like who they are," Optimus said, but it was less of an affirmation and more of an attempt to convince himself. 

Queens, War Leaders, and Primes were not -- or at least were not supposed to be -- political figures. Politicians merely served a function for a set period of time; queens, War Leaders, and Primes were born, and they held their positions for life. They were the cornerstones of Cybertronian society -- life, security, and information -- and if any of them became unstable, the results were nothing less than disastrous. As they'd learned with the slow corruption of the royal caste, culminating with Swoop's mother. As they'd learned with Megatron. 

And Swoop herself was something of an unknown quantity. She had the spark of a royal, but it was supported by civil core programming. She served in a self-chosen rather than predetermined civil role as a medic, and it didn't seem as if she was at all inclined to give up that role. And buried not so deep down, she had enough warrior nature to take out a War Leader, which traditionally would make _her_ the new War Leader. All of the Dinobots were to a greater or lesser extent an amalgam like Swoop was. They didn't quite fit into any of the traditional niches in Cybertronian society. Square pegs and round holes, as the saying went. Wheeljack, whether or not he realized it, had created a subspecies when he'd made the Dinobots' damaged sparks viable, and they had, out of necessity in the face of prejudice and social isolation, forged their own tiny microculture. Now, they were maturing far faster than they should have, and aside from Swoop no one could know what they were becoming. It was disturbing.

Ratchet, meanwhile, was angling an irritated look up at Optimus. "Yes, _we_ like who they are," he was saying waspishly. "Didn't we settle this like fifteen years ago?"

"I didn't mean it that way," Optimus calmly replied, and he truly hadn't. "I suppose I just didn't expect this from Swoop," he clarified. "Especially not _now_."

Ratchet frowned as he asked, "Why _not_ now?" And then a second later, apparently surmising Optimus's meaning, his frown deepened as he added, "She's the same person she was before she matured, you know."

"In some ways, yes," Optimus answered, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head to the side consideringly. "But in other ways, not at all. Trust me on this, Ratchet."

Ratchet sighed in resignation at that. "Whatever, oh great and all-knowing Prime," he grumbled.

"And it makes me uneasy," Optimus finished, ignoring Ratchet's grumbling out of long habit, "that she's apparently not always in control of herself." 

Optimus could tell that Ratchet's immediate impulse was to leap to Swoop's defense. It was an understandable reaction given the prejudice that had been -- and still was, occasionally -- the norm when it came to the Dinobots. It was something that Ratchet had always taken very personally, given that Ratchet saw the Dinobots as his offspring. But to the medic's credit, he reined in his temper. He scowled fiercely, of course, but he almost visibly bit his tongue. He had to know, after all, that an unstable queen was a disaster waiting to happen.

"Well," Ratchet eventually conceded with another, longer resigned sigh, "for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure there were some serious extenuating circumstances at hand here. It would take something huge to make Swoop lose it. Her coding -- and Snarl's -- was designed such that the two of them are much less volatile than Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge, if you'll recall."

"I recall," Optimus answered dryly, "that it was a condition you and Wheeljack had to agree to before you built them, yes." Ratchet snorted as Prime continued, "So what set her off, then? Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen Swoop mad, much less--"

"I have no idea what set her off, but she _does_ get mad," Ratchet interrupted. "Often at _you_ , as a matter of fact," he added fondly.

"She does?" Optimus asked, blinking down at the medic. This truly was news to him.

"Yes, she does," Ratchet confirmed. "But probably not for the reasons that you're assuming. She gets pissed off at you for the same reason that _I_ get pissed off at you on a regular basis." And when Optimus's expression turned into a silent question, Ratchet patiently answered, "She's a medic, so she gets to clean up the messes that result from the decisions that you make. It gets really old, and we're all _way_ past ready for this war to be done." 

"Yes, we are," Optimus agreed firmly. That, after all, was one of the few things that he and the medic whole-heartedly agreed on. "And it might be, now," he added thoughtfully as he eyed the unconscious Seekers arrayed around the medbay. Not to mention when he thought of the sudden lack of Megatron in the universe, something that was not at all real to him yet. If nothing else, he'd always and perhaps egotistically imagined that he'd be the one to bring down Megatron. Even if he'd somehow known that it would be a Dinobot that would do so, Swoop would have been the least likely candidate, in his mind. And yet, here they were.

"Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it," Ratchet was answering sourly. "In any case, I've never seen Swoop angry like...like _that_ , no."

"So why now?"

"Wheeljack's still working on an answer to that question," Ratchet answered with a worried frown, waving toward one of the small private rooms at the back of the medbay. "She had to be forced into medical stasis, which was no small feat. Took four people to hold her down, one of whom was _Slag_. Wheeljack's in with her, but so far all he knows is that some of her core programming is corrupted. He's working under the assumption that Soundwave hacked her, and the next time I see that droning pile of scrap, I'm going to... Well, it won't be pretty."

Optimus winced and grimaced under his mask, picturing what Ratchet would do to that particular Decepticon. And not just Ratchet...

"Especially not if Slag gets a hold of him, too," Optimus agreed, jerking his chin at that particular Dinobot, who was pacing outside the door to the room where Swoop was sequestered. His thunderous expression and enraged body language and pounding footsteps and the smoke and occasional jets of fire lancing from his vents made it clear that he wasn't far from feral, either.

"Not to mention the other Dinobots," Ratchet added with a snort. "Plus Wheeljack and a few of his favorite weapons of mass destruction."

Optimus chuckled at that and said with grim amusement, "There won't be much left of him."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Ratchet growled, and his tone was lethal enough that Optimus had to rein in an impulse to take a step or three away from him. Ratchet was not a fan of fighting and certainly not of killing. It went against everything that he was. He'd done it out of necessity a few times, but he was never happy about it. But that tone...That tone made it clear that Ratchet would happily rip Soundwave limb from limb and then stomp on his spark when he saw him next, and as a medic, Ratchet would know exactly how to do it. It fleetingly crossed Optimus's mind that perhaps the term "mother hen" that was often jokingly applied to Ratchet should be changed, more seriously, to "mama bear" instead.

"Can Wheeljack fix her?" Optimus asked, almost hesitantly, and not just to change the subject. He needed to know. They _all_ needed to know.

Ratchet's expression was haunted as he answered, "He doesn't know yet. I'm doing my best not to pester him, and I strongly suggest you do the same. He'll report as soon as he has anything definitive to tell us."

"No pestering Wheeljack, got it," Optimus agreed with a solemn nod. "Anything else?"

"The only other serious injury is Snarl," Ratchet answered, jerking his chin at a berth holding that particular Dinobot. Grimlock was hovering over him, watching as First Aid fiddled with something in Snarl's neck. First Aid and Grimlock were speaking to each other while the medic worked. Optimus couldn't hear what was being said, but he imagined that Grimlock was asking questions and First Aid was reassuring him and explaining what he was doing. "He took a bad blow to the head plus a fusion cannon blast to the chest," Ratchet was saying.

Optimus made a low, sympathetic noise and rubbed at his own chest as he understated, "That is not a pleasant experience."

"I imagine not," Ratchet agreed. "But at least it'll be the last one that anyone suffers."

"Mmm," Optimus murmured.

"And in Snarl's case," Ratchet continued before Optimus could say anything else, "it wasn't as bad as it could have been, his armor being what it is. The greater concern is that he's not shown any sign of regaining consciousness, and since it's been about eight hours since he got conked in the head, that's not good at all."

"Will he be all right?" Optimus asked, concerned.

Ratchet shrugged an uneasy shoulder. "He has some physical damage to his primary processor and there's bleeding," he said. "The bleeding's been going on long enough that First Aid's installing a drain to alleviate pressure. But otherwise...Well, until he wakes up we won't know what the effects of the damage will be or how permanent it might be." 

"Permanent?" Optimus echoed, alarmed.

"Processors are touchy," Ratchet answered somberly, "and not easily repaired or replaced. Mostly, self-repair has to fix them, which takes time. Sometimes a _lot_ of time, and sometimes time _doesn't_ heal all wounds. And since the Dinobots' processors, like pretty much everything else about them, are unique, I'm not certain how the damage will affect him."

"That's unsettling," Optimus said after a long moment.

"Yes, it is," Ratchet answered with a sigh. For a moment, he watched Grimlock watching First Aid like a distrustful hawk, and then he finished, very obviously changing the subject, "At least everyone else is just the usual, nothing that self-repair can't handle. Well, except that Mirage screwed up his leg _again_. Damn royals and their tendency to fall apart," he grumbled. "Beyond that, Hound's probably going to sleep for ten years and Skywarp for...oh, about a hundred, if I have anything to say about it."

"Yes, I heard you'd picked him up along the way," Optimus said, his voice laced with wry amusement. "Which I suppose isn't all that surprising, considering..."

"Seeker trines, yes," Ratchet supplied with a weary, heavenward glance. "Buy one, get two free." Optimus laughed out loud at that, which garnered him some frosty looks from the medbay's busy staff and other current and grumpy occupants as Ratchet added, more seriously, "But as much as I can't believe I'm saying this, it's a very good thing that Skywarp was there. With three critical injuries plus Swoop in the state she was in, we needed to get out of there quickly. That wouldn't have happened without Skywarp's teleporting abilities because half of us couldn't have made it to Silverbolt's location under our own power. All the teleporting with extra mass took its toll on him, though. Even once I got the rest of the fuel we brought with us in him, he was only at eleven percent once he was done."

"Hence the napping," Optimus observed as he regarded the black Seeker, who was ungracefully sprawled all over a medberth with one leg dangling off the edge and a large energon line stuck into a port in his midsection. Somehow the pose seemed appropriate for him.

"Pfft," Ratchet scoffed. "Hence the _major systems failures_."

Optimus gave the medic a surprised look. "You had a busy flight," he remarked.

"Yeah, no kidding," Ratchet retorted. "It was a damn good thing I decided at the last minute to bring First Aid along or at least one person would've been screwed." And then he shook his head ruefully and added, "Anyway, Skywarp'll be all right. He just needs rest, which is a good excuse for me to keep him under for a long time. He needs the rest, it'll keep him out of our proverbial hair, and it'll prevent him from having to weather the worst of the bleed-through from his trinemates, so it's a win all around."

"Also," Optimus added with a smirk in his voice, "it'll keep Red Alert from fretting."

"Oh, I wish!" Ratchet scoffed with a snort. "Mark my words, Optimus, Red Alert is going to blow an aneurysm. Or five."

"We don't _have_ aneurysms, Ratchet," Optimus reminded him.

"Red'll find a way to have them, trust me," Ratchet grumped. Optimus snorted at that while Ratchet continued, "Starscream being here for a few weeks made him twitchy enough, but twitchy multiplied by three?"

Optimus chuckled.

"You laugh now," Ratchet grumbled in response, "but Smokescreen's ready to just rip the processor out of his head and stick a new one in there. If you know what's good for you," he finished, pointing an admonishing finger at Prime, "you'll just send him and Inferno to Tahiti or something for a few months, until all of this settles down."

Optimus gave Ratchet a startled look and said, "That's...not a bad idea, actually."

Ratchet gave him a haughty look in response and said, "It's a fragging _brilliant_ idea. Because it's one of _mine_."

"Hah," Optimus scoffed. "You forget that I remember all of the not-so-brilliant ideas you've had over the years."

"Nothing but slanderous lies, I tell you," Ratchet sniffed. "Not to mention faulty memory files on your part. Maybe I should be worried about the state of _your_ processor."

Optimus huffed a laugh at that. "You probably should," he said, "after dealing with this crew for so long."

"Well, there is that," Ratchet conceded with a scowl. "Primus knows they've driven _me_ to drink."

"You and me both," Optimus agreed, with an almost Ratchet-like grumble. Then he gave the medic's shoulder a pat that was half encouraging and half jokingly patronizing and said, "Well, I'll leave all this chaos your capable hands, then. I have a feeling this debrief is going to be a doozy. Keep me posted about...everyone?"

"Will do," Ratchet answered, and without further ado he went back to fiddle with the vast array of equipment surrounding Thundercracker's berth, and Optimus Prime went off to his doozy of a debrief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirage's bum leg is a silly reference to the fact that the Mirage toy I used to have also had a bum leg that always fell off. So, it amused me to reference that in this story. :)


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Have an update.

Ratchet's "office" was tiny, really more of a closet than an office. It had in fact once been a walk-in supply closet. Ratchet preferred his cramped closet to the medbay's much larger real office that all the other medics shared mostly because the erstwhile closet's tiny size meant that it invited fewer visitors when he hid himself away in it. This, Wheeljack knew. He also knew that inviting fewer visitors was the reason why Ratchet's closet was a perpetual disaster area, enough so that Sparkplug had long ago named it a biohazard, and that its omnipresent clutter included scary-looking medical things for the very same reason that Wheeljack tended to keep things that clicked ominously on obvious display in his lab.

Unfortunately for Ratchet, Wheeljack had never been impressed with Ratchet's territorial defenses. Just as Ratchet waltzed into Wheeljack's lab whenever he felt inclined, Wheeljack in turn barged into Ratchet's closet to claim its lone visitor chair whenever he pleased. Ratchet always kept a small pile of random stuff on the chair -- another visitor-deterrent, naturally -- but Wheeljack knew that the pile never included anything important. Sometimes he moved the pile of stuff; sometimes he didn't bother and simply sat on it. This time, since he was exhausted and aching, he chose the latter, groaning theatrically as he flopped into the visitor chair and kicked his feet up on the one empty corner of Ratchet's desk that was kept clear of clutter precisely for Wheeljack's feet.

At first, it seemed as if Ratchet hadn't even noticed Wheeljack's arrival. He continued to scowl at the screen in front of him, his expression ferocious enough that Wheeljack momentarily feared for the screen's safety. Then he shrugged to himself and sank down farther into the depths of the chair, contemplating the possibility of a sorely-needed nap and then wondering how long of one he would get before Ratchet deigned to officially notice his presence. It was entirely possible that Ratchet would continue to ignore him precisely so that he _would_ nap. Ratchet was always nagging him about his irregular sleeping habits, and he'd been awake and working on Swoop for...a while now. He'd lost track of how many days it had been, but he was well aware that Ratchet wouldn't have. With that thought in mind, Wheeljack shifted in the chair to make his aft more comfortable on whatever he was sitting on and then closed his eyes with a luxuriant sigh.

His eyes were closed for only a minute or two before Ratchet started muttering. 

"Well, at least _now_ I understand," the medic grumbled, not quite under his breath.

Wheeljack opened one eye and asked, "Understand what?"

"Why we're not all dead," Ratchet answered, still glaring at the screen in front of him.

Wheeljack frowned behind his mask, opened his other eye, and ventured, "'Scuse me?"

Ratchet made an annoyed gesture at the screen in front of him and said, "You ever wonder why that group of mostly- _warriors_ that calls itself the Decepticons hasn't completely crushed us? Especially given that a warrior's joy in life is crushing anyone perceived as an enemy?"

"Uh..." Wheeljack stalled. "No?"

"Well, _I_ have," Ratchet asserted. "I've spent many long hours staring at this ship's orange goddamned ceiling plates thinking about exactly that instead of, you know, _sleeping_."

Wheeljack narrowed his eyes at that and then shrugged flippantly as he said, "Whatever floats your boat, Ratch. Me, I prefer doing much more pleasurable things when I can't sleep."

Ratchet snorted as he aimed a glare at Wheeljack amd grumbled, "Yeah, tell me something I _don't_ know. But," he added over Wheeljack's answering snicker, "at least now I can stop wondering about that subject and move on to other pressing concerns."

"Because now you understand," Wheeljack said with a sage nod. "So you said."

"Yeah," Ratchet answered with a nod. "Yeah, and in case you were wondering, the reason we're all still alive is that _they're_ falling apart, pretty much."

Wheeljack frowned at that revelation for a while and then asked, "Am I supposed to be feeling bad or something?"

"Well, _no_ ," Ratchet huffed. Then he sighed exasperatedly and continued, "I just couldn't figure out for the life of me why Thundercracker's self-repair system has been...Well, not functioning. At all. As it turns out," he said, gesturing at the screen in front of him again, "the reason is...severe malnourishment. His self-repair system has no resources to work with. All it's been doing for him for the last _two years_ or so is cannibalizing non-critical subsystems in order to maintain and repair more critical ones, to keep him going, but it's at a point now where there are no more non-critical systems to cannibalize."

"Really?" Wheeljack responded then, blinking curiously. "And he was still flying?"

"Miraculously, yeah," Ratchet answered, scowling as he flopped back in his chair and crossed his arms over his bulky chest. "Fragging warriors. He's just damned lucky the g-forces didn't tear him apart. Though I guess it explains how Megatron was able to rip a wing off of him so easily, since his structural integrity is utter crap. Starscream and Skywarp have the same problem, though not nearly as bad, and if it's a problem with the elite Seekers, then I imagine that most of the others are probably worse off..."

Wheeljack was still blinking, but when Ratchet's rant finally trailed off he deadpanned, "So am I supposed to be feeling bad or something?"

Ratchet sighed, his shoulders slumping. He leaned forward to plant his elbows on his desk, rubbing his face with both hands. "I suppose not," he grumbled through his hands. "But _I_ am." He sat back in his seat again, caught the disbelieving look that Wheeljack was shooting at him, and protested, "Don't look at me like that, Jack! It's a medic thing."

"Yeah, whatever," Wheeljack said, smiling fondly behind his mask, because it wasn't so much a "medic thing" as it was a specific "Ratchet thing." Ratchet was often bad-tempered, and he had no patience for anything that he saw as idiocy, but his overriding characteristic was compassion even when he didn't want to feel compassionate. It was one of the things that made him a _good_ medic, and it was one of the things that Wheeljack loved most about him. "But, huh," Wheeljack added as a thought suddenly struck him. "Now that you mention it, I _had_ been wondering why we haven't seen Devastator or Menasor or Bruticus for a while."

"Yeah," Ratchet said with a frown. "Yeah, if they're as bad as this," he said, waving at his screen, "then combining would be a very bad idea . The guys who form the legs would never be able to shoulder the weight. Literally. It also probably explains why I've had to treat progressively fewer fusion cannon blasts since we've been here on Earth. You of all people know the amount of resources that one full-power shot from that thing eats." Wheeljack winced at that as Ratchet thoughtfully tapped his chin with one finger, watching as Wheeljack poked at the datapad he'd brought with him, and then finished, "But anyway. You're...here."

"Nope," Wheeljack deadpanned, not looking up from the datapad. "Totally a figment of your imagination."

Ratchet snorted at that. "I'm assuming this means you have news?" he warily asked, watching Wheeljack. The nervous movements of his fingers as he fiddled with the datapad were not a good sign.

"News... Yeah, I guess so," Wheeljack answered distractedly. His absent tone prompted an ominous feeling in Ratchet, but Wheeljack didn't seem inclined to say anything else.

"And is this news that you were planning to...oh, I don't know... maybe share sometime this decade?" Ratchet exasperatedly prodded when a minute had passed.

"I suppose," the engineer answered. He finally looked up from the datapad and said, "It was a crawler." Ratchet just gave him a blank but expectant look, so Wheeljack further explained, "A tiny piece of code designed to find and then alter very specific strings of the target's code. This one was also designed to defeat firewalls and circumvent anti-viral coding and such. Quite an ingenious little bastard, really."

"So," Ratchet surmised. "Soundwave." It wasn't even a question.

"Oh yeah," Wheeljack confirmed. "Damned thing practically had his signature on it," he added sourly. "And he is so, _so_ dead the next time I see him. But, I saved a copy of the crawler for Jazz. With some modifications, maybe it could be useful to us."

"Maybe," Ratchet said with a snort. "If there was still a war going on."

Wheeljack gave Ratchet a wide-eyed look. "You really think it's over? Like, for good?"

"I dunno," Ratchet answered with a weary shrug as he sank lower in his chair. "Maybe. Prowl has a litany of doubts, but when doesn't he? Optimus, on the other hand, seems to think it's over, but he's somehow managed to stay a fragging starry-eyed optimist after all this time." 

Wheeljack snickered half-heartedly at that.

"Then again," Ratchet continued, "he and Starscream have been awfully _chatty_ since Starscream woke up. I even heard them laughing yesterday. So...I don't know. I mean, given their probable physical condition, I don't know how the Decepticons are still fighting, anyway."

"Sheer stubbornness?" Wheeljack ventured.

Ratchet snorted and said, "Sheer obsession on Megatron's part would be more my guess, and if that's what's been keeping them going, then...Well. All I know is that we've got three of the highest-ranked Decepticons lurking around here. One _might_ be able to stand for ten seconds if he was conscious. Another doesn't seem inclined to do anything other than be a wise-ass who eats us out of house and home. And the third...is Starscream, and when he's not chatting with Optimus Prime, he's too busy brooding to do anything...well, Starscream-y. So I dunno."

"Well," Wheeljack said, taking all of that in, "I guess we just hope for the best then."

"I guess," Ratchet replied, frowning doubtfully. "So what was the target?" he asked after a long moment of contemplative silence between them.

Wheeljack blinked, having settled into staring at the datapad that he held loosely in one hand, his thoughts in a whirl. "What?" he asked blearily as he looked up at Ratchet.

"The target?" Ratchet prodded. "Of the crawler?"

"Oh, right. Yeah, that." He drew in a huge gust of air and then said, "That. It was designed to inject code that would put Swoop into cycle again."

"Oh," Ratchet responded, nonplussed. He frowned in confusion as he added, "Megatron wanted her to produce new sparks?"

"Maybe?" Wheeljack answered with a shrug. "Yeah, maybe that, too," he added quietly.

" _Too_?" Ratchet echoed, his eyes widening.

But Wheeljack just evasively waved the datapad at him and said, "Thing is, Soundwave seems to have figured that the crawler would be dealing with standard royal core programming."

"Which Swoop doesn't have," Ratchet put in.

"Right," Wheeljack answered with a nod. "She has some of that coding, sure, so it did find and alter the strings it was looking for, but Soundwave had no way to know how the code alterations that the crawler made would interact with the non-royal programming that's all linked in as part of her core. So while it did do what it was intended to do, it also left a frag-ton of what I assume to be unintended damage in its wake."

"Hence the corruption," Ratchet interpreted.

"Yeah," Wheeljack answered with a nod. "Ironically, _they_ would have had to deal with that, if we hadn't intervened, which is why I'm figuring the damage was unintentional. But in any case, the only part of Swoop's core that can function independently and that wasn't sent into a mess of read errors and recursive loops was...her animal base."

"Hence the feral episode," Ratchet interpreted again.

"Well, um, yeah," Wheeljack hedged, looking almost startled. "Yeah, I...I guess that was part of it. Probably. Yeah."

Ratchet narrowed his eyes at the engineer. Something was off about him, had been since he'd come in. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was yet, but shifty and uncertain wasn't Wheeljack's style.

"Can you repair the damage?" Ratchet asked hesitantly, thinking that maybe that was the problem. After all, if Wheeljack couldn't fix Swoop, no one could. And if she couldn't be fixed...

But Wheeljack was already answering the question. "I already did," he said dully. "She's...fine. I didn't bring her back online yet, but I've repaired all the damage."

"Oh," Ratchet responded, blinking in puzzlement. "You did?" 

Not only had he been wrong about the cause of Wheeljack's uncertainty, but Wheeljack's answer also conveyed none of the happiness or satisfaction or even smug triumph that Ratchet might have expected. His voice was flat and inflectionless, when as a rule, Wheeljack was cheerful even when he had to force himself to be. Now there was a cloud of dread hanging over him, and he wasn't even trying to bury it under false cheer. Something was very wrong.

"Yeah," Wheeljack was answering. "Once I figured out what Soundwave did and how he did it, and once I could decrypt and pick apart the crawler's code so that I knew precisely what it was targeting and what it was designed to do, it was a pretty easy fix, overall..." He paused then, his brow furrowing into a sudden frown, before continuing, "Now that I think about it, it was really sloppy of Soundwave that the crawler didn't erase itself once it'd done its thing, but I guess maybe he was in a rush, so... Well anyway, yeah, pretty easy. I mean, it took time and all, because it was a lot of lines of corrupted code to find and repair, and...and she might lose some time because I had to do some...uh, creative restoration here and there. But...Well, actually, maybe it'd be _better_ if...if she..."

Wheeljack's almost Bluestreakian babble trailed off as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, slumping farther into it, obviously troubled.

"Better if she _what_?" Ratchet asked, though he had a distinct feeling that he didn't want to know.

"If she...did," Wheeljack answered awkwardly. "Lose some time," he clarified.

A familiar sinking dread overcame Ratchet as he asked, "Why?"

Wheeljack heaved a long sigh that was loud enough that it had to have been routed through every vent in his body. He straightened in his chair, dropped his feet to the floor with a solid _thunk_ , and then leaned across Ratchet's desk to hand over the datapad he'd been toying with. 

"Scroll down," he said quietly as he sat back in his chair, when Ratchet just frowned at the datapad's screen, obviously wondering what the hell he was supposed to be looking at. "About halfway or so. I highlighted it."

Ratchet did as he was told, found the small block of code that Wheeljack had highlighted in startling electric orange, and then froze. Core-level programming was by no means his specialty, but inexpert as he was in a general sense, Ratchet was familiar with the highlighted coding that was in front of him, even though it was something that he hadn't seen in a long time.

"Oh," he responded, dumbfounded, nearly dropping the datapad from suddenly numb hands. 

Ratchet realized that he shouldn't have been surprised. Starscream had warned them. About this. Specifically. Prowl had reminded him of it, too, in an awkward, backhanded way that was completely unlike Prowl's usual brutal approach to offering up advice. But at the time, they'd been on their way back to Autobot Headquarters, and Ratchet and First Aid had had far too much on their hands to spare any worry for Swoop, who had seemed mostly undamaged. 

Physically, at least. 

"Gestational protocols," Ratchet heard himself saying stupidly as he experienced a wave of intense vertigo, as if the world had suddenly dropped out from underneath him, unbalancing him on more than one level.

"Yup," Wheeljack concisely confirmed, his voice desolate.

"But," Ratchet almost spluttered, "if that was what Megatron wanted, he didn't need to mess with her code. He could've just..."

Wheeljack snorted and spat, "Sure, but I imagine he wanted to screw with her mind as much as wanted to screw with--"

" _Don't_ say it," Ratchet barked, emphatically cutting off Wheeljack's words. 

He couldn't think about it. He had to compartmentalize, to separate what he was seeing from who it was that they were talking about. It was the only way he'd be able to handle the situation with even an iota of professional detachment, detachment that Swoop might desperately need, when they woke her. When they told her. If she freaked out, Ratchet freaking out right alongside her wouldn't help her at all.

"I could _make_ her lose time," Wheeljack was offering meanwhile, as Ratchet stared at the datapad in his hand, outwardly blank while inwardly seething like molten lava. He blinked and then stared at Wheeljack's face instead. "You know?" Wheel jack added uncertainly in the face of Ratchet's intense stare. "So she wouldn't remember anything about the time that she was captive?"

"No," Ratchet said firmly, blinking his way out of his angry stupor to focus on Wheeljack's face and the aura of mingled hope and despair that he was projecting. "If she ever found out you'd done that to her deliberately, she'd--"

"Be rightfully pissed off at me and then never trust me again," Wheeljack interrupted with a defeated nod. "Yeah, I know, and I don't want that. But I _could_ maybe terminate the gestation protocols," he offered hesitantly. "It'd be one less thing for her to deal with..." 

Ratchet was still staring at Wheeljack, and his gaze hardened at what Wheeljack had said. He didn't like that idea, either, and he didn't want Wheeljack to like it. Because if he did, Ratchet would have to fight him over it. It wouldn't be the first time that he and Wheeljack had been at odds in their long history together, but it would probably be the worst-ever rift between them. Thankfully, Wheeljack was still talking.

"But I don't want to do that," he was saying dejectedly. "So much has happened to her lately, and it's all been out of her control and without her consent, and I can't...I won't take away from her any choices that she _can_ make..." 

Wheeljack's voice trailed off helplessly as he remembered Swoop wrapped up in his arms, frightened and trembling and so very angry about what was happening to her, all of it out of her control. She'd felt like something small and precious and helpless that he had to protect, even though he knew that she was far from helpless. He'd assured her that everything would be OK, that they'd figure things out, that she would be all right. 

He hadn't meant to lie to her.

"Yeah," Ratchet was quietly agreeing, relieved that he and Wheeljack seemed to be on the same page. "Yeah, that's definitely a decision that she needs to make for herself." 

He and Wheeljack were companionably silent for a long moment before Ratchet heaved a heavy sigh, tossed the datapad on his desk, and said, "Well, I suppose this explains a lot about the feral episode, at least. I mean, on top of the whole core manipulation thing and Megatron nearly killing someone that, in her state, she was probably seeing as a mate, he...he..."

"He did," Wheeljack confirmed, impotent fury suddenly burning through him, cutting through the numbness that had been plaguing him ever since he'd discovered the active gestation protocols in Swoop's code. The object of his fury was already dead, a heap of so much inert scrap in the morgue, awaiting maybe salvage and definitely celebratory smelting. That heap of scrap had been created by Swoop herself, who had far more right to rage than he had, so there was little that Wheeljack could do with his own fury now. He resolved to make something explode, though. Deliberately. 

Blowing a big chunk out of the moon would do the trick, and it couldn't hurt to start crunching the numbers for the project, at least...

"Well," Ratchet said after a long moment of silence between them, breaking Wheeljack out of his moon-defacing fantasies, "Optimus was concerned about the fact that she went feral."

Wheeljack blinked at Ratchet, thinking the change of subject odd. "He was?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ratchet answered, nodding. "He said that it... _made him uneasy_ that Swoop went feral now when she never had before."

Wheeljack's eyes narrowed at that, and what Ratchet could see of his expression looked distinctly sour. "'Now' meaning 'since she matured,'" he said bitterly.

"Yeah," Ratchet repeated, staring at a point on the wall across from him, just above Wheeljack's shoulder. He sighed as he added, "He kind of had a point, actually, but I told him that there had to be extenuating circumstances behind it, big ones, and there certainly _are_ , so hopefully he'll--"

"You think we should tell him?" Wheeljack interrupted, not certain that he liked that idea at all. It felt like the worst kind of invasion of privacy. "Now?" he added, a tinge of anger seeping into his voice.

Ratchet jerked at the accusation in the engineer's voice and refocused his gaze on him instead of on the wall. He discovered that there was even more anger on Wheeljack's face and in his body language than there had been in his voice. 

"No!" Ratchet protested. "If and when he's told about any of that will be up to Swoop, if she decides to...continue. It's just..."

"Just?" Wheeljack prompted when it seemed certain that Ratchet wasn't going to finish his thought.

Ratchet sighed and flopped back in his chair.

"When he said it and _how_ he said it... It felt like we'd suddenly jumped back in time by about twenty years. He claimed that he didn't mean it like I was thinking, and maybe that's partly true. But I think on some level he _did_ mean it that way. I had a feeling that, deep down, he still doesn't trust them."

Wheeljack sighed and said, "And he's not the only one. With some of them the distrust isn't even deep down. I know there are a few who aren't...well, happy...about what Swoop is."

Ratchet nodded and replied, "I know. And they aren't stupid, either. If Swoop continues with the gestation, they're going to know who the father is, and that's going to make it worse. For her and especially for the kid, when it arrives."

Wheeljack considered that thought for a moment, tapping the fingers of one hand against his chin, and then hedged, "Well, actually... They might be more likely to think that Starscream--"

"Pfft!" Ratchet interrupted. "As if that would be _better_?"

Wheeljack shrugged as he answered, "Maybe a little bit?"

"Yeah, _maybe_." Ratchet paused then, blinking for a long moment as a thought struck him. "It _wasn't_ Starscream, was it?" he asked. It might not matter much, if at all, to their louder and more opinionated Autobot brethren, but it suddenly dawned on Ratchet that it would matter a hell of a lot to Swoop. Ratchet had no idea what the relationship truly was between her and Starscream -- and he didn't want to know -- but he knew that it was at least cordial, so he was certain that Swoop would be much happier about carrying Starscream's offspring than Megatron's.

But his hopes were dashed when Wheeljack shook his head and answered, "No, it definitely wasn't Starscream. The gestation protocols have only been active for five days. That aligns with the time that she was gone, so it was definitely Megatron. I know what you're thinking, but..."

"But?" Ratchet prompted, recognizing the sudden far-away look that bloomed on Wheeljack's face as his words stalled.

"Well," Wheeljack answered with a hesitant shrug, "everyone knows that Swoop needs possible successors as soon as possible, and everyone knows that she can only mate in any reproductive way with warriors. So far as we know, about ninety percent of the warriors who are still alive are Decepticons, and none of the few who are Autobots seem eager to step up to the plate, so to speak, so it stands to reason that... Well."

Ratchet snorted at that. "Yeah, everyone might know all of that here," he said, jabbing an index finger at his own forehead, "but it's not as if that's going to translate into universal acceptance." 

He sighed and added, "But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We don't even know if she'll choose to continue, so it might not even--"

"She will," Wheeljack interrupted, his voice ringing with foreboding certainty.

"You can't know that," Ratchet answered with a scowl. "You can't possibly know...How do you know that?"

"She's a queen," Wheeljack answered with a nonchalant shrug, as if the answer should have been obvious. "It's not exactly in their nature to kill."

"She killed perfectly fine!" Ratchet countered. "I watched her do it! With my own eyes!" _And then she wanted to kill me_ , he didn't add. 

"That was different," Wheeljack asserted, shaking his head emphatically. "That was responding to external threats when she was in a feral state. This is... We're talking about a part of her here."

"A part of her that doesn't even physically exist," Ratchet pointed out with a scowl.

" _Yet_ ," Wheeljack calmly answered. "But it will physically exist very soon. And I don't think she'll want to terminate the process. I don't think she'll be _able_ to."

Ratchet scowled ferociously at that, but he also knew, deep down, that Wheeljack was likely right. He wasn't about to admit it, though. "Well," he answered with a grumble instead, "I guess we'll see."

"I guess we will," Wheeljack echoed with a nod. "And in the meantime?"

Ratchet blew out a huge sigh. "In the meantime..." he said, "we need to bring her back online and see how she's doing and then...tell her."

"Now?" Wheeljack yelped, unable to disguise the bit of panic he felt over the notion. He was dreading doing as Ratchet suggested, but he also knew that it had to be done. And...

"No time like the present," Ratchet said, as if on cue. The grimace he wore made it plain that he shared Wheeljack's dread, but he resolutely stood up and headed for the door of his closet, Wheeljack hard on his heels.


End file.
